



Qass 1 

BooL_ 



_. 



Ancient Classics for English Readers 

EDITED BY THE 

REV- W. LUCAS COLLINS, M.A. 



PLATO 



CONTENTS OF THE SERIES. 



HOMER : THE ILIAD, 

HOMER: THE ODYSSEY, 

HERODOTUS, 

C2ESAR, . 

VIRGIL, 

HORACE, 

.ESCHYLUS, By 

XENOPHON, 

CICERO, 

SOPHOCLES, 

PLINY, By A, 

EURIPIDES. 

JUVENAL, . 

ARISTOPHANES, 



By the Editor. 

By the Same. 

By George C. Swayne, M.A. 

... By Anthony Trollope. 

. .... By the Editor. 

. By Theodore Martin, 

the Right Rev. the Bishop of Colombo. 

. By Sir Alex. Grant, Bart., LL.D. 

By the Editor. 

By Clifton W. Collins, M.A. 
Church, M.A., and W. J. Brodribb, M.A. 
By William Bodham Donne. 
By Edward Walford, M.A. 
By the Editor. 
HESIOD AND THEOGNIS, By the Rev. James Davies, M.A. 
PLAUTUS AND TERENCE, ... By the Editor. 
TACITUS, .... By William Bodham Donne. 

LUCIAN, By the Editor. 

PLATO, By Clifton W. Collins. 

THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY, ... By Lord Neaves. 

LIVY By the Editor. 

OVID, By the Rev. A. Church, M.A. 

CATULLUS, TIBULLUS, & PROPERTIUS, By J. Davies, M.A. 
DEMOSTHENES, . . By the Rev. W. J. Brodribb, M.A. 
ARISTOTLE, ... By Sir Alex. Grant, Bart., LL.D. 

THUCYDIDES, By the Editor. 

LUCRETIUS By W. H. Mallock, M.A. 

PINDAR, ... By the Rev. F. D. Morice, M.A. 



a(y 



r*> x 



J^T 




PLATO 






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BY 



CLIFTON W. COLLINS, M.A. 

11 
H.M INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS 



PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 

i8 8o. 



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X 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



The Dialogues of Plato have been grouped together 
in this little volume as their subject or argument 
seemed to suit the requirements of the Chapter in 
which they will be found, without regard to chrono- 
logical order. Nor has the vexed question of the 
"Platonic Canon," or what are or are not the gen- 
uine works of Plato, been entered upon in these 
pages. All the Dialogues attributed to him in 
Stallbauni's edition are accepted here, and discussed 
with more or less brevity, as their interest for the 
general reader seemed to require. 

The writer desires to express his deep sense of his 
obligations to Professor Jowett for permission to use 
his valuable translation of Plato, from which most 
of the quotations found in the text (including the 
extracts marked "J.") have been made. Those 



vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

marked "D." are taken from the translation of the 
" Kepublic " by Messrs Bavies and Vaughan. 

The other authorities most frequently consulted are 
G rote's ' Plato and the other Companions of Socrates/ 
Whewell's ' Platonic Dialogues,' Zeller's ' Socrates and 
the Socratic Schools/ and the Histories of Philosophy 
by Maurice, Eitter, and Ueberweg. 

The writer also wishes to record his sense of the 
kindness of H. W. Chandler (Waynflete Professor of 
Moral Philosophy at Oxford), who was good enough 
to read through the proofs of the first four chapters of 
this voluma 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 
CHAP. I. LIFE OP PLATO, ...... 1 

ft II. PHILOSOPHERS AND SOPHISTS, ... 19 

DIALOGUES : PARMENIDES — SOPHISTES — PROTA- 
GORAS— GORGIAS— HIPPIAS— EUTHYD EMUS. 

ti III. SOCRATES AND HIS FRIENDS, ... 49 

SYMPOSIUM — PH^DRUS — APOLOGY — CRITO — 
PHJSDO. 

ii IV. DIALOGUES OF SEARCH, . . . .80 

LACHES — CHARMIDES — LYSIS — MENO — EUTH Y- 
PHRO — CRATYLUS— THE^ETETUS. 

ii V. PLATO'S IDEAL STATES, 109 

ii VI. THE MYTHS OF PLATO, 146 

ii VII. RELIGION, MORALITY, AND ART, . . . 169 

ii VIII. LATER PLATONISM, . .... 185 




PLATO. 



CHAPTER L 



LIFE OF PLATO. 

•• Eagle ! why soarest thou above that tomb,— 
To what sublime and star-y-paven home 

Floatest thou ? 
I am the image of great Plato's spirit, 
Ascending heaven ; Athens doth inherit 
His corpse below." 
—(Epitaph translated from the Greek by Shelley.) 

Plato was born at iEgina in B.C. 430 — the same year 
that Pericles died — of a noble family which traced its 
descent from Codrus, the last hero - king of Attica. 
Little is told us of his early years beyond some stories 
of the divinity which hedged him in his childhood, 
and a dream of Socrates,* in which he saw a cygnet 

* Athenaeus tells us of another dream, by no means so com- 
plimentary to Plato, in which his spirit appeared to Socrates 
in the form of a crow, which planted its claws firmly in the 
bald head of the philosopher, and flapped its wings. The in- 
terpretation of this dream, according to Socrates (or Athenaeus), 
was. that Plato would tell many lies about him. 

4. C. vol. xix. A 



2 PL A TO. 

fly towards him, nestle in his breast, and then spread 
its wings and soar upwards, singing most sweetly. The 
next morning Ariston appeared, leading his son Plato 
to the philosopher, and Socrates knew that his dream 
was fulfilled. 

It is easy to fill in the meagre outlines of the 
biography as given us by Diogenes Laertius ; for 
Plato lived in a momentous time, when Athens could 
not afford to let any of her sons stand aloof from 
military service, and when every citizen must have 
been more or less an actor in the history of his times. 
Plato of course underwent the usual training of an 
Athenian gentleman, such as he has sketched it him- 
self in the " Protagoras ; " first attending the grammar 
school, where he learnt his letters, and committed to 
memory long passages from the poets, which he was 
taught to repeat with proper emphasis and modulation ; 
and the frequent quotations from Homer in his Dia- 
logues prove how thoroughly this part of his mental 
training was carried out.* Then he was transferred to 
the Master who was to infuse harmony and rhythm 
into his soul by means of the lyre and vocal music. 
Then he learned mathematics, for which subject he 
showed a special aptitude ; and we hear of him 

* Several pieces of poetry bearing Plato's name have come 
down to us; and there is a graceful epitaph on "Stella, 
ascribed to him, which Shelley has thus translated : — 

' Thou wert the morning star among the living, 
Till thy fair light had fled ; 
Now having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving 
New splendour to the dead-" 



LIFE OF rLATO. 3 

wrestling in the palaestra, where his breadth of shoul- 
ders stood him in good stead, and winning prizes 
at the Isthmian games. He also found time to study 
" the old masters " of philosophy, and (as might he 
expected) the two whose works attracted him the 
most were Heraclitus and Pythagoras. The melan- 
choly of the one, and the mysticism of the other, 
found an echo in his own thoughts. 

He was fifteen at the time of the expedition to 
Sicily, and was probably among the crowd which 
watched the great fleet sail out of the harbour of 
Piraeus in all the pomp and circumstance of war ; and 
two years afterwards he must have shared in the 
general desjDair, when the news came that the fleet 
and the flower of the army had perished, and with 
them the hopes of Athens. 

Then Decelea (only fifteen miles from the city) was 
fortified by the Spartans, and proved a very thorn in 
the side of Attica; for flocks and herds were destroyed, 
slaves fled thither in numbers, and watch had to be 
kept by the Athenians night and day, to check the con- 
tinual sallies made from thence by the enemy. Plato 
was now eighteen, and was enrolled in the list which 
corresponded to the modern Landwehr, and had to take 
his share in that harassing garrison duty which fell 
on rich and poor alike, when the citizens (as Thucy- 
dides tells us) slept in their armour on the ramparts, 
and Athens more resembled a military fort than a 
city. 

Then followed the loss of prestige and the defection 
of allies ; for the subject islands either openly revolted 



4 PL A TO. 

or intrigued secretly with Sparta ; and Alcibiades, the 
only Athenian who conld have saved Athens, was an 
exile and a renegade, using Persian gold to levy Spartan 
troops against his country. Suddenly the Athenians, 
with the energy of despair, made a prodigious effort to 
recover the empire of the seas, which was passing from 
their hands. They melted down their treasures ; they 
used the reserve fund which Pericles had stored up 
for such an emergency ; and within thirty days they 
had equipped a fresh fleet of over a hundred sail. 
Then followed a general levy of the citizens ; every 
man who could hear arms was pressed into the service ; 
freedom was promised to any slave who would volun- 
teer ; and even the Knights (of whom Plato was one) 
forgot the dignity of their order, hung up their bridles 
in the Acropolis, and went on board the fleet as 
marines. There is no reason to suppose that Plato 
shunned his duty at such a crisis ; and we may there- 
fore conclude that he volunteered with the rest, served 
with the squadron which relieved Mitylene, and was 
present at the victory of Arginusse shortly afterwards. 
Soon Alcibiades was recalled, and his genius gave a 
different character to the war ; but the success of the 
Athenians was only temporary. Lysander came upon 
the scene ; and on the fatal shore of ^Egos-Potami the 
Athenian fleet was destroyed — almost without a blow 
being struck. Then followed the blockade of Athens, 
the consequent famine, and the despair of the citizens, 
with the foe without and two rival factions within, 
till at last the city surrendered, and the long walls 
were pulled down to the sound of Spartan music. 



LIFE OF PLATO. 5 

We have no clue, beyond a casual reference in 
Xenophon, as to what part Plato took in subsequent 
events. His own tastes and sympathies lay with 
the few ; and all his intimate friends were among 
the oligarchs (the u good men and true," as they termed 
themselves), who, by a coup d'etat, effected what is 
known as the .Revolution of the Four Hundred. A 
section of these formed the execrated Thirty Tyrants. 
Critias, the master - spirit of this body, was Plato's 
uncle, and probably had considerable influence over 
him. But be this as it may, we find Plato attracted 
by the programme in which the oligarchs pledged 
themselves to reform abuses and to purge the state 
of evil-doers ; and for a time, at all events, he was an 
avowed partisan of the Thirty. But they soon threw 
off the mask, and a Reign of Terror followed, which 
made their name for ever a byword among the Athe- 
nians. Plato was probably in the first instance dis- 
gusted by the jealous intolerance of this new party, 
which drove the aged Protagoras into exile, and pro- 
scribed philosophical lectures \ but when this intoler- 
ance was followed by numerous assassinations, he was 
utterly horrified, and at once withdrew from public life, 
and from all connection with his former friends. 

There was little indeed to tempt a man of Plato's 
spirit and principles to meddle with the politics of his 
day. The great statesmen, and with them the bloom 
and brilliancy of the Pericleau .age, had passed away ; 
and the very name of Pericles, as De Quincey says, 
" must have sounded with the same echo from the 
past as that of Pitt to the young men of our first 



6 PL A TO. 

Reform Bill." The long war had done its work. 

Not only had it well nigh exhausted the revenues and 
strength of Athens, but it had brought in its train, 
as necessary consequences, ignoble passions, a selfish 
party spirit, a confusion of moral sentiments, and an 
audacious scepticism, which were going far to under- 
mine the foundations of right and wrong. One revo- 
lution had followed another so rapidly that public 
confidence in the constitution was fast disappearing ; 
and the worst symptom of a declining nation had 
already shown itself, in that men of genius and honour 
were beginning to despair of their country and to with- 
draw from public life. We can well believe that the 
picture which Plato draws of the Philosopher in his 
" Republic " was no fancy sketch : — 

Those who belong to this small class have tasted how 
sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and have also 
seen and been satisfied of the madness of tt\£ multitude, 
and known that there is no one who ever acts hoftestly in 
the administration of states, nor any helper who will save 
any one who maintains the cause of the just. Such a saviour 
would be like a man who has fallen among wild beasts, unable 
to join in the wickedness of his friends, and would have to 
throw away his life before he had done any good to himself 
or others. And he reflects upon all this, and holds his peace, 
and does his owm business. He is like one who retires 
under the shelter of a wall in the storm of dust and sleet 
which the driving wind hurries along ; and when he sees 
the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is content if 
only he can live his own life, and be pure from evil or 
unrighteousness, and depart in peace and goodwill, with 
bright hopes.* 

* Republic, iv. (Jowett.) 



LIFE OF PLATO. 7 

The next twelve years must have "been the period of 
Plato's greatest intimacy with Socrates; and he was the 
great philosopher's constant companion until the day of 
his death. He had now no ties to bind him to Athens 
— perhaps, indeed, he did not feel secure there — and he 
went to live at Megara with his friend Euclid. Then 
he set out upon those travels of which we hear so 
much and know so little ; " and " (says an old his- 
torian), "whilst studious youth were crowding to 
Athens from every quarter in search of Plato for 
their master, that philosopher was wandering along 
the banks of Nile or the vast plains of a barbarous 
country, himself a disciple of the old men of Egypt." * 
After storing his mind with the wisdom of the Egyp- 
tians, Plato is said to have gone on to Palestine and 
Phoenicia — to have reached China disguised as an oil 
merchant — to have had the "Unknown God" revealed 
to him by Jewish rabbis — and to have learned the 
secrets of the stars from Chaldsean astronomers. But 
these extended travels are probably a fiction. 

His visit to Sicily, however, rests on better evidence. 
He made a journey thither in the year 387 B.C., with 
the object of witnessing an eruption of Mount Etna — 
already fatal to one philosopher, Empedocles. On his 
way he stayed at Tarentum with his friend Archytas, 
the great mathematician, and a member of the Pytha- 
gorean brotherhood. This order — which, like the 
Jesuits, was exclusive, ascetic, and ambitious — had 
formerly had its representatives in every city of Magna 

* Valerius Maximus, quoted in Lewes's Hist, of Philos., 
L200. 



8 PL A TO. 

Grsecia, and had influenced their political history ac- 
cordingly. Even then their traditions and mystic 
ritual, as well as the ahility shown by individual 
members, daily attracted new converts. Among these 
was Dion, the young brother-in-law of Dionysius, 
Tyrant of Syracuse. Dion was introduced by the 
Pythagoreans to Plato, and their acquaintance soon 
warmed into a friendship which has become historical. 
There was much on both sides that was attractive. In 
Plato, Dion found the friend who never flattered, the 
teacher who never dogmatised, the companion who was 
never wearisome. The gracious eloquence, the charm 
of manner, the knowledge of life, and, above all, the 
generous and noble thoughts so frankly expressed by 
Plato, must have had the same effect upon him as the 
conversation of Socrates had upon Alcibiades. His 
heart was touched, his enthusiasm was kindled, and he 
became a new man. There dawned upon him the con- 
ception of another Syracuse, — freed from slavery, and 
from the oppressive presence of foreign guards — self- 
governed, and with contented and industrious citizens 
— and Dion himself, the author of her liberties and the 
founder of her laws, idolised by a grateful people. 

These day-dreams had a strong effect on Dion ; and 
Plato partly shared in his enthusiasm. As in his own 
model Republic, all might be accomplished " if philo- 
sophers were kings." Even as things were, if Diony- 
sius would but look with a favourable eye upon Plato 
and his teaching, much might be done in the way of 
easing the yoke of tyranny which pressed so heavily 
upon the wretched Syracusans. 



LIFE OF PLATO. 9 

Accordingly, Plato visited Syracuse in company with 
Dion, and was formally presented at court. 13ut the 
results were unsatisfactory. It was not, indeed, likely 
that the philosopher, who was the sworn foe of Tyranny 
in the abstract, and who looked upon the Tyrant as the 
incarnation of all that was evil in human nature, would, 
either by flattery or plain speaking, convince Dionysius 
of the error of his ways. Plato had several interviews 
with Dionysius ; and we are told that he enlarged 
upon his favourite doctrine of the happiness of the 
virtuous and the inevitable misery of the wicked, till all 
who heard him were charmed by his eloquence, except 
the despot himself, who in a rage ordered him to be 
taken down to the market-place there and then, and 
to be sold as a slave to the highest bidder ; that so he 
might put his own philosophy to a practical test, and 
judge for himself if the virtuous man was still happy 
in chains or in prison. Plato was accordingly sold, and 
was " bought in " by his friends for twenty minse. 
Another account is, that he was put on board a trireme 
and landed at iEgina on the way home, where he was 
sold, and bought by a generous stranger, who set him 
at liberty and restored him to Athens. In any case, 
Plato might consider himself fortunate in escaping from 
such a lion's den as the court of the savage Dionysius ; 
and he had learnt a salutary lesson, that theoretical 
politics are not so easily put into practice as men think, 
and that caution and discretion are necessary in deal- 
ing with the powers that be. 

On his return to Athens, weary of politics, and 
wishing to escape from the turmoil and distractions 



10 PLATO. 

of the town, lie retired to a house and garden which 
he had purchased (or inherited, for the accounts differ) 
at Colonus. There, or in the famous " olive grove " of 
the Academy close by, he gave lectures to, or held dis- 
cussions with, a distinguished and constantly increas- 
ing "body of pupils. Sauntering among the tall plane- 
trees, or pacing those historical colonnades, might 
be found all the wit and genius of the day, — men 
of science and men of letters — artists, poets, and, in 
greater numbers than all, would-be philosophers. 1 The 
pupils of Plato, unlike the poor crushed followers of 
Socrates, are described by one comic poet as dandies 
with curled hair, elegant dress, and affected walk ; and 
we are told by another how the master's broad shoulders 
towered above the rest, and how he charmed them with 
his sweet speech, " melodious as the song of the cicalas 
in the trees above his head." No one must suppose, 
however, that the subjects of discussion in the Academy 
were trivial or frivolous. Over the gates was to be seen 
the formidable inscription — " Let none but Geometri- 
cians enter here ; " * and, according to Aristotle, the lec- 
tures were on the Supreme Good — i.e., the One, as con- 
trasted with the Infinite. 

Twenty years thus passed, and Plato's eloquence was 
daily attracting to the Academy fresh students from all 
parts of Greece, when he received a second summons 
to visit Sicily from his old friend and pupil Dion, with 
whom he had kept up a constant correspondence. 
Dionysius I. was dead, and his empire, "fastened" 

* Sir W. Hamilton considers this tradition "at least six cen- 
turies too late."— Essays, p. 27, note. 



LIFE OF PLATO. II 

(as he expressed it) " by chains of adamant," had 
passed to his son — a young, vain, and inexperienced 
prince, who had not inherited either the ability or 
energy of his father. Dion still retained his position 
as minister and family adviser, and there seemed to be 
at last an opening under the new regime for carrying 
out his favourite scheme of restoring liberty to the 
Syracusans. Accordingly he spared no pains to im- 
press the young prince with the wisdom and eloquence 
of Plato * and so successfully did he work upon his 
better feelings, that Dionysius, says Plutarch, "was 
seized with a keen and frantic desire to hear and con- 
verse with the philosopher.'' He accordingly sent a 
pressing invitation to Plato, and this was coupled with 
a touching appeal from Archytas and other Pytha- 
goreans, who looked eagerly forward to a regeneration 
of Syracuse. Plato (though reluctant to leave his work 
at the Academy) felt constrained to revisit Sicily — 
"less with the hope of succeeding in the intended 
conversion of Dionysius, than from the fear of hearing 
both himself and his philosophy taunted with con- 
fessed impotence, as fit only for the discussion of the 
school, and shrinking from all application to practice."* 
He was received at Syracuse with every mark of 
honour and respect. Dionysius himself came in his 
chariot to meet him on landing, and a public sacrifice 
was offered as a thanksgiving for his arrival. And at 
first all things went well. There was a reformation in 
the manners of the court. The royal banquets were 

* Grote, Hist, of Greece, vii. 517. 



12 PLATO. 

curtailed ; the conversation grew intellectual ; and 
geometry became so much the fashion that nothing 
was to be seen in the palace but triangles and figures 
traced in the sand. . Many of the foreign soldiers were 
dismissed ; and at an anniversary sacrifice, when the 
herald made the usual prayer — " May the gods long 
preserve the Tyranny, and may the Tyrant live for ever,'' 
— Dionysius is said to have stopped him with the 
words— " Imprecate no such curse on me or mine." 
So deeply was he impressed by Plato's earnest pleading 
in behalf of liberty and toleration, that he was even 
prepared, we are told, to establish a limited monarchy 
in place of the existing despotism, and to restore free 
government to those Greek cities in Sicily which had 
been enslaved by his father. But Plato discounte- 
nanced any such immediate action ; his pupil must go 
through the prescribed training, must reform himself, 
and be imbued with the true philosophical spirit, 
before he could be allowed to put his principles into 
practice. And thus, like other visionary schemes of 
reform, the golden opportunity passed away for ever. 
The ascendancy of "the Sophist from Athens" (as 
Plato was contemptuously termed) roused the jealousy 
of the old Sicilian courtiers, and their slanders poisoned 
the mind of Dionysius, whose enthusiasm had already 
cooled. He grew suspicious of the designs of Dion, 
and, without giving him a chance of defending himself 
against his accusers, had him put on board a vessel 
and sent to Italy as an exile. Plato himself was de- 
tained a state prisoner in the palace, flattered and 
caressed by Dionysius, who appears to have had a 



LIFE OF PLATO. 13 

.sincere admiration and regard for him, but at the same 
time to have found the Platonic discipline too severe a 
trial for his own weak and luxurious nature. At last 
he was allowed to depart, after giving a conditional 
promise to return, in the event of Dion being recalled 
from exile. It is said that, as he was embarking, 
Dionysius said to him — "When thou art in the 
Academy with thy philosophers, thou wilt speak ill of 
me." " God forbid," was Plato's answer, " that we 
should have so much time to waste in the Academy as 
to speak of Dionysius at all." 

Ten years later Plato is induced — for the third and 
last time — by the earnest appeal of Dionysius to revisit 
Syracuse ; and a condition of his coming was to be the 
recall of Dion. As before, he is affectionately wel- 
comed, and is treated as an honoured guest ; but so far 
from Dion being recalled, his property is confiscated 
by Dionysius, and his wife given in marriage to another 
man ; and Plato (who only obtains leave to depart 
through the intercession of Archytas) is himself the 
bearer of the unwelcome news to Dion, whom he meets 
at the Olympic games on his way home. Dion (as we 
may easily imagine) is bitterly incensed at this last 
insult, and immediately sets about levying an army to 
assert his rights and procure his return by force. At 
Olympia he parts company from Plato, and the two 
friends never meet again. The remainder of Dion's 
eventful career (more romantic, perhaps, than that of 
any other hero of antiquity) has been well sketched 
by Mr Grote, who records his triumphant entry into 
Syracuse, his short-lived popularity, the intrigues and 



14 PLATO. 

conspiracy of Heraclides, whose life he had spared, and 
his base assassination by his friend Callippus. 

Once more restored to Athens, Plato continued his 
lectures in the Academy, and also employed himself in 
composing those philosophical Dialogues which bear 
his name, and of which some thirty have come down 
to us. Several reasons probably contributed to make 
Plato throw his thoughts into this form. First, it 
was the only Avay in which he could give a just idea 
of the Socratic method, and of the persistent exami- 
nation through which Socrates was wont to put all 
comers ; again, he wished to show the chain of argu- 
ment gradually unwinding itself, and by using the milder 
form of discussion and inquiry, to avoid even the ap- 
pearance of dogmatism, especially as he must have often 
felt that he was treading on dangerous ground. Prolix 
and wearisome as some of these Dialogues may often 
seem to modern ears, we must remember that they were 
the first specimens of their kind ; that they were writ- 
ten when the world was still young, when there was 
little writing of any sort, and when romances, essays, 
or " light literature " were unknown ; while at the 
same time there was a clever, highly-educated, and 
sympathetic " public " ready then as now to devour, 
to admire, and to criticise. After the barren wastes of 
the old philosophy, with its texts and axioms, its quo- 
tations from the poets, and crude abstractions from 
nature, these Dialogues must have burst upon the 
Athenian world as an unexpected oasis upon weary 
travellers in the desert ; and they must have hailed 
with delight these fresh springs 01 truth, and these 



LIFE OF PLATO. 15 

new pastures for thought and feeling. As a new 
phase of literature, we may well believe that they 
were received with the >same interest and surprise as 
the appearance of the ' Spectator ' in the last century, 
or the ' Waverley Novels ' at the beginning of our own. 
They were, in fact, the causeries de Lundi of their age. 
Plato assuredly knew well the lively and versatile 
character of those for whom he was writing. The 
grave and didactic tone of a modern treatise on philo- 
sophy would have fallen very flat on the ears of an 
Athenian audience, accustomed to see their gods, 
statesmen, and philosophers brought upon the stage 
in a grotesque medley, and unsparingly caricatured. 
But not Momus himself (as a Greek would have said) 
could have turned these Dialogues into ridicule ; and 
their very faults— their want of method and general 
discursiveness — must have been a relief after the for- 
mal commonplaces of the Sophists. Plato himself 
makes no pretence of following any rules or s}^stem. 
" Whither the argument blows, we will follow it," he 
says in the " Eepublic," and he is fond of telling us 
that a philosopher has plenty of time on his hands. But 
the vivacity and variety, the subtle humour — which 
can never be exactly reproduced in a translation — the 
charming scenes which serve as a framework to the 
discussion, and, above all, the purity and sweetness of 
the language, which earned for the writer the title of 
" The Attic Bee," — all these were reasons for the 
popularity which these Dialogues undoubtedly enjoyed. 
There is no means of fixing the order in which they 
were written, but they probably all belong to the last 



16 PLATO. 

forty years of his life. A story is indeed extant to the 
effect that Socrates heard the " Lysis " read to him, 
and exclaimed — " Good heavens ! what a heap of false- 
hoods this young man tells about me ! " hut Socrates 
had in all probability died some years before the "Lysis" 
was published. The speakers in these Dialogues are 
no more historical than the characters in Shakspeare's 
plays, and Plato was (perhaps purposely) careless 
of dates and names. But the personages thus intro- 
duced serve their purpose. They give a life and a real- 
ity to the scenes and conversations which is wanting 
in Berkeley's Dialogues, and in all modern imitations, 
and their tempers and peculiarities are touched by a 
master-hand. But there is one character which Plato 
never paints, and that is — his own. Except in two 
casual allusions, he never directly or indirectly intro- 
duces himself ; and no one can argue, from the internal 
evidence of his writings, as to what he was or was not. 
Like Shakspeare, he deserves Coleridge's epithet of 
" myriad-minded," for he appears to us in all shapes and 
characters. He was " sceptic, dogmatist, religious 
mystic and inquisitor, mathematical philosopher, artist, 
poet — all in one, or at least all in succession, during 
the fifty years of his philosophical life." * 

There is one pervading feature of similarity in all 
the Dialogues, and that is, the style.t If Jove had 
spoken Greek (it was said of old), he would have 

* Grote's Plato, i. 214. 

+ Sir Arthur Helps, himself a writer of purest English, has 
given us in * Realm ah ' his ideas of what a perfect style should 
be. Every word in his description would closely apply to Plato, 



LIFE OF PLATO. 17 

spoken it like Plato ; and Quintilian — no mean critic — 
declared that his language soared so far at times above 
the ordinary prose, that it seemed as if the writer was 
inspired by the Delphic Oracle. But these very sen- 
tences which seem to us to flow so easily, and which 
we think must have been written currente cdlamo, were 
really elaborate in their simplicity; and the anecdote 
of thirteen different versions of the opening sentence 
in the " Republic " having been found in the author's 
handwriting is probably based upon fact. 

Up to the age of eighty-one, Plato continued his liter- 
ary work — " combing, and curling, and weaving, and 
unweaving his writings after a variety of fashions ; " * 
and death, so Cicero tells us, came upon him as he 
was seated at his desk, pen in hand. He was buried 
among the olive-trees in his own garden; and his 
disciples celebrated a yearly festival in his memory. 

As might be expected, such a man did not escape 
satire and detraction even in his own day. To say 
that he was ridiculed by the comic poets, is merely to 
say that he paid the penalty common to all eminence 
at Athens ; but he was accused of vanity, plagiarism, 
and what not, by writers such as Antisthenes and 
Aristoxenus, whose philosophy might have taught 

especially the concluding lines; . . . " and withal there must 
be a sense of felicity about it, declaring it to be the product of 
a happy moment, so that you feel it svill not happen again to 
that man who writes the sentence, nor to any other of the sons 
of men, to say the like thing so choicely, tersely, mellifluously, 
and completely."— Realmah, i. 175. 

* Diunysius of Halicarnassus, quoted in Se well's Dialogues 
of Plato, p. 55. 

a. c. vol. xix. B 



18 ' PLATO. 

them better. Athena3us, with whom no reputation is 
sacred, devotes six successive chapters to a merciless 
attack on his personal character • and besides retailing 
some paltry anecdotes as to his being fond of figs, and 
inventing a musical water-clock which chimed the 
hours at night, he accuses him of jealousy and malev- 
olence towards his brother philosophers, and tells a 
story to show his arrogance, and the dislike with whicn 
his companions regarded him. On the same evening 
that Socrates died (so says Athenaeus), the select few 
who had been with him in the prison, met together at 
supper. All were sad and silent, and had not the 
heart to eat or drink. But Plato filled a cup with 
wine, and bade them be of good cheer, for he would 
worthily fill their master's place \ and he invited 
Apollodorus to drink his health, and passed him the 
cup. But Apollodorus refused it with indignation, 
and said, " I would rather have pledged Socrates in 
his hemlock, than pledge you in this wine." 



CHAPTER IT. 

PHILOSOPHERS AND SOPHISTS. 

DIALOGUES : PARMENIDES— SOPHTSTES — rROTAGORAS — 
GORGIAS — HIPPIAS — EUTHYDEMUS. 

'* Divine Philosophy, 
Not harsh and rugged, as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute." — Milton. 

" Philosophy," says Plato in his *' Thesetetus,' " begins 
in wonder, for Iris is the child of Thaumas." It is 
the natural impulse of the savage, wherever he sees 
force and motion that he cannot explain, to invent a 
god ; and so the first stage of Science is a sort of 
Fetishism, or worship of the powers of nature. The 
Greek, especially curious and inventive, carried this 
tendency to its furthest limits ; and the result was an 
elaborate Mythology, in which every object and oper- 
ation in the physical world was referred to a special 
god. Thus the thunder was caused by the wrath of 
Zeus j the earthquake was produced by Poseidon ; 
and the pestilence by the arrows of Apollo. Poets 
like Homer and Hesiod reduced these myths to a sys- 
tem, and perpetuated them in their verse ; and so it 
may be said that Greek philosophy springs from 
poetry, for in this poetry are contained the germs of 



20 PL A TO. 

all subsequent thought. Homer, indeed, has "been 
called " the Greek Eible ; " and every Athenian 
gentleman is said to have known the Iliad and 
Odyssey by heart. Their morality, it is true, was of 
a rough and ready character, suited to the high spirit 
of heroic times, w\Ltn war and piracy were the hero's 
proper profession ; but there are everywhere traces of 
a strict code of honour and a keen sense of rights and 
duties. The oath and the marriage tie, the claims of 
age and weakness, the guest and the suppliant, are all 
respected ; and though all stratagems are held to be 
fair in war, Achilles, the poet's model hero, tells us 
that his soul detests the liar '*' like the ^ates of hell." 

Hesiod looks back with regret to the heroes of this 
golden time, long since departed to the islands of the 
blest. His own lot has fallen upon evil days ; the 
earth has lost its bloom ; the present race of men are 
sadly degenerate ; and Shame and Betribution, the 
two last remaining virtues, have gone for ever. 

Simonides and Theognis complete this gloomy pic- 
ture ; they and the other " Gnomic " poets, fragments 
of whose writings have come down to us, preach for 
the most part a prudential morality, unlike the chival- 
rous naivete of Homer, and expressed in mournful 
sentences which read like verses from Ecclesiastes. 
The uncertainty of fortune, the inconstancy of friends, 
the miseries of poverty and sickness — these are the 
phases of life which strike them most. 

Then come the " Seven Wise Men," of whom 
Solon was one, who stand on the border-land of ro- 
mance and history, like the Seven Champions of 



DIALOGUES. 21 

Christendom. We know little of them heyond those 
aphorisms ascribed to each of them, and said to 
have been engraven in gold on the gates of Delphi, 
which became as household words in Greece, and some 
of which have found their way into modern proverbs 
— " The golden mean," " Know thyself," " Virtue is 
difficult," " Call no man happy till he dies." Ano- 
ther of the seven was Thales — half star-gazer, half 
man of business — honoured by Aristotle with the 
title of " the first philosopher." He and those who 
followed him tried to discover some one element or 
first principle underlying the incessant change and 
motion which they saw in the world around them. 
Thales believed this principle to be Water — improving 
on the old myth of Oceanus, the eternal river that 
girds the universe. Anaximander thought the uni- 
verse originally was a bath of flames, or a ring of 
fire broken up into sun, moon, and stars, while the 
earth remained balanced like a column in the centre. 
Anaximenes, again, said that " Air ruled over all 
things ; and the Soul, being Air, ruled in man." Thus 
these three Ionian philosophers took each some one 
element as the symbol of an abstract idea. 

Then came Heraclitus of Ephesus, surnamecl the 
Obscure, — " shooting," says Plato, " as from a quiver, 
sayings brief and dark." He is oppressed with the 
sense of the perpetual change in nature. Nothing is 
at rest, all is in continual movement and progression. 
Life and time are like a stream flowing on for ever, 
in which thoughts and actions appear for a moment 
and then vanish. Pythagoras, again, maintained that 



22 PLATO. 

Number was the sacred and unchangeable principle by 
which the universe was regulated ; that there was a 
" music of the spheres ;" and that the soul itself was a 
harmony imprisoned in the body : while his contempo- 
rary Democritus, " the first materialist/' held that by 
some law of necessity countless atoms had moved to- 
gether in the void of space, and so produced a world. 

Lastly, the Eleatics took higher ground, and con- 
ceived the idea of one eternal and absolute Being 
which alone exists, while non-existence is inconceiv- 
able. Plurality and change, space and time, are 
merely illusions of the senses. This doctrine is set 
forth at some length by Parmenides, the founder of 
this school of thought, in an epic poem, in which he 
has been commissioned, he says, by the goddess of 
wisdom, " to show unto men the unchangeable heart 
of truth." Plato, who always speaks of him with re- 
spect — " more honoured than all the rest of philoso- 
phers put together" — has given his name to one of 
his Dialogues, in which he introduces him as visiting 
Athens in his old age, in company with Zeno, his 
friend and pupil, and there discussing his theories 
with Socrates, then a young man of twenty. 

The Dialogue turns upon the difficulties involved in 
the famous Eleabic saying, that " the All is one, and 
the many are nought ; " but, by an easy transition, the 
argument in the first part of the Dialogue discusses the 
doctrine of Ideas — the key-stone of Plato's philosophy. 
This doctrine seems to have grown upon him, and en- 
grossed his mind; and his poetic feeling is continually 
suggesting additions and embellishments to it, just as 



PARMEXIDES. 23 

an artist adds fresh, touches to a favourite picture. 
He admits, with Heraclitus, that all ohjects of sense 
are fleeting and changeable; and he admits with the 
El ea tics that Being alone can really he said to exist ; 
hut he blends these two theories together. Everything 
that we can name or see has its eternal Idea or pro- 
totype ; and this particular flower, with its sensible 
bloom and fragrance, is merely the transitory image 
or expression of the universal Flower that never fades. 
And thus, far removed from this material world of 
birth and death, change and decay, Plato conceived 
another world of pure and perfect forms, imperceptible 
by earthly senses and perceived by the eye of reason 
alone, each form in itself separate, unchangeable, and 
everlasting, and each answering to some visible object 
to which it imparts a share of its own divine essence, 
as the sun gives light to nature. 

But (objects Parmenides in this Dialogue), how can 
you bridge over the gulf which separates the sensible 
from the Ideal world 1 How do these earthly imita- 
tions of the Ideas partake of the essence of their di- 
vine prototypes'? And how far can you carry your 
theory ] Have the meanest as well as the noblest ob- 
jects — hair and mud, for instance, as well as beauty 
and truth — their ideal Forms ] Again, there may be 
Ideas of Ideas, and so you may go on generalising to 
infinity. Lastly, they cannot be only conceptions of 
the mind ; while, if they are types in nature and have 
a real existence, we cannot know them ; for all human 
knowledge is relative, and to comprehend these eter- 
nal and absolute Ideas, we should require an Ideal and 



24 PLATO. 

absolute knowledge, such as the gods alone can pos- 
sess. Of ourselves, therefore, we cannot know these 
Ideas ; and yet, unless we admit that absolute and ab- 
stract Ideas exist, all discussion — nay, all philosophy 
— is at an end. 

These objections, so skilfully put by Parmenides, are 
not answered by Plato in this, or indeed in any other 
Dialogue ; and he thus makes out a strong case against 
his own favourite theory. Socrates himself is lectured 
by Parmenides on his defective mental training. His 
enthusiasm (says the old philosopher), which makes 
him " keen as a Spartan hound " in the quest of 
truth, is a noble impulse in itself; but it will be use- 
less unless he, so to speak, reads his adversary's brief, 
and studies a question in all its bearings, tracing all 
the consequences which may follow from the assump- 
tion or denial of some hypothesis. Above all, So- 
crates shqnjd cultivate " Dialectic," * which alone can 
eiiTf51e*him to separate the ideal from the sensible, and 
is an indispensable exercise, although most people re- 
gard it as mere idle talking. 

Parmenides is then prevailed upon himself to give 
an example of this " laborious pastime ; " though, as he 
says, he shakes with fear at the thought of his self-im- 
posed task, " like an old race-horse before running the 
course he knows so well." He selects for examination 
his own Eleatic theory, and traces the consequences 
which follow from the contradictory assumptions that 
" One is," and " One is not." We need not follow him 

* The process by which the definitions of Logic are attained. 



PARMEN1DES. 25 

through, the mazes of this chain of arguments, which 
result after all in two contradictory conclusions. It is 
doubtful if Plato had any other object in this " leger- 
demain of words " than to stimulate the curiosity of 
a youthful inquirer like Socrates with a series of argu- 
ments as puzzling and equivocal as the riddle in his 
" Republic," to which Mr Grote compares them : " A 
man and no man, seeing and not seeing, a bird and no 
bird, sitting upon wood and no wood, struck and did 
not strike it with a stone and no stone." The only 
difference is, that in one case the author knew the 
solution of his riddle ; while it may be doubted if 
Plato himself held the key to the enigmas in his 
" Parmenides." 

In this Dialogue w r e are introduced also to Zeno 
— "Parmenides' second self" — the able exponent of 
the art of Dialectic, and a type of a new stage of Greek 
thought which had just commenced with the Sophists. 
The appearance of these professors at Athens was a 
sign of the times. Hitherto, as we have seen, philo- 
sophy had resulted in rough abstractions from Nature 
or in a vague Idealism; but now thought was directed 
to the practical requirements of life, and the Sophists 
supplied a recognised want in the education of the 
age. They were the professors of universal know- 
ledge ; and, above all, they taught Rhetoric — in the 
view of an Athenian the most important of all branches 
of learning. To speak with fluency and dignity was 
not so much an accomplishment as a necessary safe- 
guard at Athens, where " Informers " abounded, where 
litigation was incessant, and where a citizen was liable 



26 PL A TO. 

to be called upon to defend his life and property any- 
day in one of the numerous law-courts. Again, elo- 
quence, far more than with us, was a source of success 
and popularity in public life ; and as a French soldier 
was said to carry a marshal's baton in his knapsack, so 
every citizen who had the natural or acquired gift of 
eloquence might aspire to rise from the ranks, and be- 
come president of Athens. Provided that he had a 
ready and plausible tongue, neither his poverty nor 
mean descent need stand in his way; for the foremost 
place in Athens had been occupied in succession by a 
tanner and a lamp-seller. The small number of citizens, 
as compared with slaves, made political power more 
accessible than in our over-grown democracies; and 
every citizen was forced to become part and parcel of 
the state in which he lived. Moreover, the Greek 
Assembly was more easily moved by an appeal to their 
feelings or imagination, especially on an occasion of 
strong public interest, than a modern House of Com- 
mons. Sometimes their enthusiasm broke through all 
bounds, and Plato's description of the effect produced 
by a popular orator is probably not exaggerated. 

All motives, therefore — policy, ambition, self-defence 
— combined to induce the Athenian to learn the art 
of speaking, and there was an increasing demand for 
teachers. The Sophists undertook to qualify the young 
aspirant for political distinction ; to teach him to think, 
speak, and act like a citizen, to convince or cajole the 
Assembly, to hold his own in the law-court, and gen- 
erally to give hirn the power of making " the worse 
seem the better reason." Their lecture -rooms were 



SOPlflSTES. 27 

crowded ; they were idolised by the rising generation • 
and they not uncommonly made large fortunes, charg- 
ing often as much as fifty drachmas (about two guineas) 
a lesson ; for few of them would have the magnanimity 
of Protagoras, who left it to the conscience of his pupils 
to name their own fees. 

The Sophists were the sceptics and rationalists of 
their times, and they headed the reaction against the 
dogmatism of previous philosophy. According to 
them, there was no fixed standard of morality ; real 
knowledge was impossible ; tradition was false ; reli- 
gion was the invention of lying prophets ; law and 
justice were devices of the strong to ensnare the weak ; 
pleasure and pain were the only criteria of right and 
wrong; each man should use his private judgment in 
all matters, and do that which seemed good in his 
own eyes. 

We can hardly estimate the mingled feelings of fear 
and dislike with which, an average Athenian citizen 
would regard the influence undoubtedly possessed by 
this class. Patriotism and religious prejudice would 
intensify the hatred against these foreign sceptics ; 
and added to this would be the popular antipathy 
which has in all times shown itself against scheming 
lawyers and ambitious churchmen — 

" Chicane in furs, and casuistry in lawn." 

For, inasmuch as philosophy was closely blended with 
their religion, the Sophist would seem to practise a sort 
of intellectual simony ; tampering with and selling at 
a high price the divinest mysteries ; holding the keys 



28 PLATO. 

of knowledge themselves, but refusing to impart, except 
to such as came with full purses, those truths which 
were to the Greek as the very bread of life. 

Doubtless Plato had sufficient reason to justify the 
repulsive picture which he has drawn of the Sophist 
in several of his Dialogues, as " the charlatan, the 
foreigner, the prince of esprits faux, the hireling who 
is not a teacher ; . . . the ' evil one/ the ideal 
representative of all that Plato most disliked in the 
moral and intellectual tendencies of his own age, the 
adversary of the almost equally ideal Socrates." * 

In the Dialogue called The Sophist, an attempt 
is made to define, by a regular logical process called 
"dichotomy," the real nature of this many-sided crea- 
ture ; no easy task, says Plato, " for the animal is 
troublesome, and hard to catch." He has a variety of 
characters. Firstly, he is a sort of hunter, and his art 
is like the angler's, with the difference that he is a 
fisher of men, and baits his hook with pleasure, 
" haunting the rich meadow-lands of generous youth." 
Secondly, he is like a retail trader, but his merchandise 
is a spurious knowledge which he buys from others or 
fabricates for himself as he wanders from city to city. 
Thirdly, he is a warrior, but his tongue is his sword 
with which he is eternally wrangling about right and 
wrong for money. Fourthly, since education purifies 
the soul by casting out ignorance or the false conceit 
of knowledge, men would have you believe that the 
Sophist does this ; though, as a matter of fact, he is 

* Jowett's Plato, hi. 448. 



PROTAGORAS. 29 

about as like the real " purger of souls " as a wolf 
is like a dog. Lastly, this creature aspires to universal 
knowledge, and will argue — ay, and teach others to 
argue — about any object in creation; and, like a clever 
painter, he will impose upon you the appearance for 
the reality, and thus lie steals away the hearts of our 
young men, deceiving their ears and deluding their 
senses, while he disguises his own ignorance under a 
cloud of words. In fact, he is a mere imitator — and 
an imitator of appearance, not of reality. 

" But how " (an objector replies) " can a man be said 
to affirm or imitate that which is only appearance, and 
has no real existence ] " This quibble is followed by a 
perplexing discussion on "Not- Being" — the stumbling- 
block of Eleatic philosophers. To us nothing can be 
simpler than the distinction between " this is not," 
i.e, does not exist — and " this is not," i.e., is not true ; 
but so oppressed was the Eleatic with the sense of 
"Being" as alone having existence, that he held that 
no reality could be attached to non-being ; and there- 
fore falsehood, which was merely the expression of 
non-being, was impossible. Nothing would be gained 
by following out the threads of this difficult argument ; 
and we may dismiss the Eleatic theory with the con- 
solation that, as Professor Jowett says, Plato has effec- 
tually " laid its ghost " — we will hope, for ever. 

PROTAGORAS. 

The opening of this Dialogue is highly dramatic. 
Socrates is awakened before daylight by the young 
Hippocrates, who is all on fire to see and hear this Pro- 



30 PL A TO. 

tagoras, who has just come to Athens. Socrates calms 
his excitement, and advises him to be sure, before he 
pays his money to the great Sophist, that he will get 
his money's worth ; for it is a rash thing to commit his 
soul to the instruction of a foreigner, before he knows 
his real character, or whether his doctrines are for 
good or for evil. " my friend ! " he says, earnestly, 
" pause a moment before you hazard your dearest in- 
terests on a game of chance ; for you cannot buy know- 
ledge and carry it away in an earthly vessel : in your 
own soul you must receive it, to be a blessing or a 
curse." 

Talking thus gravely on the way, they arrive at the 
house of Callias, who had spent more money on the 
Sophists — so Plato tells us — than any other Athenian 
of his times. The doorkeeper is surly, and at first 
refuses to admit them, thinking that his master has 
had enough of the Sophists and their friends already. 
But at last they enter, and find a large company 
already assembled within. Protagoras himself is 
walking up and down the colonnade, declaiming to 
a troop of youths who had followed him from all 
parts of Greece, attracted by the music of his words, 
" as though he were a second Orpheus." Hippias, 
another Sophist, whom we shall meet again, is lecturing 
on astronomy to a select audience in the opposite 
portico ; while the deep voice of Prodicus, a younger 
professor, is heard from an adjoining room, where he 
lies still warmly wrapped up in bed, and conversing 
from it to another circle of listeners. 

Socrates at once steps up to Protagoras, and tells 



PROTAGORAS. 31 

liim the purpose for which they have sought him ; 
and the great man makes a gracious answer. " Yes — 
Hippocrates has done right to come to him, for he is 
not as other Sophists. He will not treat him like a 
schoolboy, and weary him with astronomy and music. 
Ho ; he will teach him nobler and more useful lessons 
than these : prudence, that he may order his own 
house well ; and political wisdom, that he may prove 
himself a good citizen and a wise statesman." 

" But," asks Socrates, half incredulously, " can such 
wisdom and virtue as this be really taught at all ] If 
it were so, would not our statesmen have taught their 
own children the art by which they became great them- 
selves, and the mantle of Pericles have descended in 
a measure upon his sons 1 " 

To this Protagoras replies by a parable. Man was 
overlooked in the original distribution of gifts by 
Epimetheus among mortal creatures, and was left the 
only bare and defenceless animal in creation; and 
though Prometheus strove to remedy his brother's 
oversight as far as he could, by giving him fire and 
other means of life, still there was no principle of 
government, and man kept slaying and plundering his 
brother man; till at last Jove took pity on him, and 
sent Hermes to distribute justice and friendship, not 
to a favoured few, but to all alike. " For," said Jove, 
" cities cannot exist, if a few only share in the virtues, 
as in the arts ; and further, make a law by my order 
that he who has no part in reverence and justice shall 
be put to death as a plague to the state." The very 
fact that evil-doers are punished, not in retaliation for 



32 PLATO. 

past wrong, but to prevent future wrong, is a proof 
that certain virtues can be acquired " from study, and 
exercise, and teaching. " In fact, a man's education 
begins in bis cradle. From childhood he is placed 
under tutors and governors, and stimulated to virtue 
by admonitions, by threats, or blows. When be arrives 
at man's estate, the law takes the place of his masters, 
and compels him to live uprightly. He who rebels 
against instruction or punishment is either exiled or 
condemned to death, under the idea that he is in- 
curable. " Who teaches virtue, say you ? (Protagoras 
continues) ; you might as well ask who teaches Greek. 
The fact is, all men are its teachers, — parents, guard- 
ians, tutors, the laws, society — each and all do their 
part in forming a man's character." 

Socrates professes himself charmed with the elo- 
quence of Protagoras ; »but there is one little ques- 
tion further upon which he would like to have his 
opinion. " Is there one virtue, or are there many?" 
Protagoras, who at first argues that the virtues are 
separate — like the different features of a man's face — 
is forced much against his will to admit that holiness 
is much the same as justice, — and so on with the 
several others. 

Then a line from the poet Simonides is discussed — 
" It is hard to be good j " and Protagoras, who had 
been hitherto the chief speaker, is himself put to the 
question by Socrates, with a reminder that short 
answers are best for short memories — like his own. 
This discussion is simply a satire on the verbal criti- 
cism so common in that ace, and reduced to a science 



G0RG1AS. 33 

by the Sophists ; when men in the very exuberance of 
thought, like the Euphuists in the Elizabethan age, 
fenced with sharp sayings — taking, as here, some well- 
known text from a poet, illustrating its meaning, and 
using it to point a moral, like a preacher in a modern 
pulpit. 

But this criticism is admitted by both, sides to be a 
somewhat commonplace amusement.. To quote from 
the poets, says Socrates, with some sarcasm, especially 
when they are not present to tell us what they really 
meant, is a mere waste of time ; it is like listening to 
a flute-girl after dinner, and betrays a dearth of inven- 
tion on the part of the company. So the original 
argument on the plurality of Virtue is resumed ; and 
it is proved, to the satisfaction at least of one dis- 
putant, that knowledge is not only a power in itself, 
but is also the main element in every virtue ; and that 
even if pleasure were the rule of life — which it is not 
— still knowledge would be required to strike the 
balance between pleasure and pain. 

GORGIAS. 

Among the professors of the day none was more 
distinguished than Gorgias of Leontini, who came as 
an ambassador to Athens to obtain her aid against 
Syracuse before the great Sicilian war. His doctrines 
resulted in utter Nihilism. Nothing (he said) exists ; 
if anything existed, it could not be known ; and, even 
if it could be known, such knowledge could not be 
imparted. In this Dialogue he is the guest of Cal- 
licles, an accomplished Athenian gentleman ; and he is 

a. c. vol. xix. c 



34 PLATO. 

pressed by Socrates to give an account of himself and 
his art. Khetoric, replies Gorgias, is his art, and it is 
used by him arid by others for the best of purposes 
— namely, to give political freedom to all men, and 
political power to a few. Of course, like other arts, 
it is capable of abuse ; but it is not the teacher's 
fault if his pupils, like a boxer in the mere wan- 
tonness of strength, use their weapons injuriously or 
unfairly. 

Socrates (who seems to consider Sophistry quite fair 
in war against a Sophist) uses a fallacy as gross as 
any of those which he himself exposes in the " Euthy- 
demus," and makes Gorgias contradict his previous as- 
sertion. The Rhetorician is asserted to have learned 
justice from his teacher — granted ; he is therefore, ipso 
facto, a just man, and his art is equally just. How, 
then, can he act injuriously 1 

Polus — a young, pupil of Gorgias — who is sitting 
near, is indignant at what he rightly thinks an inten- 
tional misuse of words, and plunges into the discussion 
with all the impetuosity of youth. Socrates, he says, 
has no right to force such a plain contradiction in 
terms upon Gorgias — nay, it is positive ill-breeding in 
him to do so. 

" Most excellent Polus," says Socrates, in his po- 
litest manner, " the chief object of our providing for 
ourselves friends and children is that when we grow 
old and begin to fail, a younger generation may be at 
hand to set us on our legs again in our words and ac- 
tions ; so now, if I and Gorgias are failing, we have 
you here, ready to be help to us, as you ought to be ; 



Q ORG I AS. 35 

and I, for my part, promise to retract any mistake 
which you may think I have made — on one condition.'* 

And this condition is that his answers must he 
brief. True, it is hard that Polus should be deprived 
of his freedom of speech, especially in Athens ; but it 
is harder still, says Socrates, for his hearers, to have to 
listen to long-winded arguments. 

Then Socrates gives his views on Ehetoric, which 
was the question they had started with. It is not, 
strictly speaking, an art at all, but, like cookery or 
music, is a mere routine for gratifying the senses, 
being, in fact, a part of flattery, and the shadow of a 
part of politics, and bearing the same relation to jus- 
tice that Sophistry bears to legislation.* 

In the course of his argument with Polus, Socrates 
makes two statements which sound to his audience 
like the wildest paradoxes — truisms as they may ap- 
pear from a Christian point of view. It is better (he 
says) to suffer than to do a wrong ; and the evil-doer, 
though possessed of infinite wealth and power, must 
inevitably be miserable. Though all the world should 
be against him, he will maintain this to be the truth — 
yes, and he will go a step further. The evil-doer who 

* The following table exhibits the respective places whiob 
Socrates considers Rhetoric and Sophistry to hold in the edu 
cation of his day : — 



Training 



Real. Sham. 

Of Body 1 G y mnas & cs > wi th its sham counterpart, Cosmetics, 
i Medicine, ., .. .. Cookerv. 



Medicine, „ „ „ Cookery. 

Law-making, „ „ „ Sophistry. 

Judging, „ „ „ Ehetoric. 



36 PL A TO. 

escapes the law, and lives on in liis wickedness, is a 
more miserable man than he who suffers the reward of 
his crimes ; and though the tyrant or murderer may 
avoid his earthly judge, as a sick child avoids the 
doctor, still he carries about with him an incurable 
cancer in his soul. For his own part, Socrates would 
heap coals of fire upon the head of his enemy by let- 
ting him escape punishment. " If he has stolen a 
sum of money, let him keep it, and spend it on him 
and his, regardless of religion and justice ; and if he 
have done things worthy of death, let him not die, 
but rather be immortal in his wickedness/' 

Callicles — the shrewd man of the world — is amazed 
to hear such doctrines, which, if put into practice, 
would, he thinks, turn society upside down. " Is 
your master really in earnest, or is he joking]" he 
asks Chserephon. 

" He speaks in profound earnest," is the reply. 

" Yes/' says Socrates ; " and my words are but the 
echo of the voice of truth speaking within my 
breast." 

But Callicles is not to be imposed upon by such 
" brave words." Gorgias was too modest, and Polus 
too clumsy an opponent to point out an obvious fal- 
lacy. Socrates has been playing fast and loose with 
the words Custom and Nature, and has confounded 
two distinct things. To suffer wrong is better than 
to do w r rong by Custom, but not by Nature. Con- 
ventional Justice is the refuge of the coward and 
the slave, and was invented by the weak in self- 
defence. Naturally, Might is Eight— 



GORGIAS. 37 

n The good old rule, the simple plan, 
That they should take who have the power, 
And they should keep who can." 

Socrates is surely-not too old to learn a little common- 
sense. Philosophy, as a part of education, is a good 
thing, no doubt, to start with. But if a man carries it 
with him into later life, he becomes a useless and ridicu- 
lous member of society, at the mercy of any chance 
accuser ; hiding in holes and corners, and whispering 
to a t few chosen youths, instead of standing forth 
boldly before the world, and making his mark in life. 

Socrates compliments Callicles on a frankness so 
rarely met with, but presses him as to the exact sense 
of " natural justice " — i.e., the will of the stronger. 
By " stronger " Callicles explains that he means the 
wise and stout-hearted politician, who has the ambition 
and spirit and desires of a king ; and who, moreover, 
will not scruple to gratify them to the full. " Yes," 
says Callicles, emphatically, " luxury, intemperance, 
and licence, if they are duly supported, are happiness 
and virtue — all the rest is a mere bauble, custom con- 
trary to nature, and nothing worth." 

Socrates, in his own fashion, disproves these monstrous 
doctrines, and forces Callicles, though much against 
his will, to admit that pleasure and virtue are not 
always identical ; that really Virtue is, or should be, 
the end of all our actions ; that in the long-run the 
just and temperate man alone is happy ; and that he 
who leads a robber's life is abhorred by gods and men 
while upon earth, and goes down to Hades with his 
soul branded with the scars of his crimes. There must 



38 PLATO 

come a day of judgment and retribution, when each 
man shall receive the just reward of his deeds. 

Now I (concludes Socrates) am persuaded of the truth of 
these things, and I consider how I shall present my soul 
whole and undefiled before the Judge in that day. Ee- 
nouncing the honours at which the world aims, I desire 
only to know the truth, and to live as well as I can, and, 
when the time comes, to die. And to the utmost of my 
power, I exhort all men to do the same. And in return 
for your exhortation of me, I exhort you also to take part 
in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and 
greater than every other earthly conflict. — J. 

But in spite of his triumphant defence of Virtue, 
there is a bitter tone of isolation and loneliness in the 
last part of this Dialogue. " I, and I only, am left," 
Socrates seems to say — like Elijah upon Carmel — 
anions ten thousand who know not the truth. My 
own generation will not hear me or believe me ; they 
will not even understand me ; and in the end I shall 
probably be accused — as a physician might be arraigned 
by a pastry-cook before a jury of children ; and as I 
cannot refer to any pleasures which I have provided 
for the people, but can only appeal to my own blame- 
less life, any one may foresee the verdict. " Not that 
I fear death" — he says, with a noble scorn — only the 
coward and the profligate need fear that. There is 
something nobler than mere ease and personal safety. 
" He who is truly a man, ought not to care much 
how long he lives ; he knows, as women say, that 
none can escape the day of destiny, and therefore is 
not too fond of life ; all that he leaves to heaven, and 



H IP PI as. 39 

thinks how he may best spend such term as is allotted 
him." 

THE "GREATER" AND " LESSER " HIPPIAS. 

Two short Dialogues ascribed to Plato on doubtful 
grounds have come down to us bearing the name of 
Hippias, who is the representative of the younger 
generation of Sophists, clever and accomplished, but, 
as we shall see, intolerably vain of his personal merits. 

"How is it," asks Socrates on meeting him, "that 
the wise and handsome Hippias has been so long away 
from Athens'?" 

" Public business has taken up all my time," Hippias 
replies ; " for I am always singled out by my country- 
men of Elis on any important occasion, as being the 
only man who can properly represent their city, and I 
have just been on an embassy to Sparta." 

"Lucky fellow !" says Socrates, "to combine such 
dignity and usefulness, and to get large sums from the 
youth in return for that knowledge which is more 
precious than any gold. But how was it that the 
wis a men of old took no practical part in politics 1 " 

" Because they had not the ability to combine public 
and private business, as we do now." 

" Ah, well," says Socrates, " I suppose wisdom has 
progressed, like everything else. Gorgias and Prodicus 
have, I know, made immense sums from their pupils ; 
but those old sages were too simple-minded to ask for 
payment, or make an exhibition of their knowledge. 
Nowadays, he is wisest who makes most money." 

" You would be astonished," says Hippias, " if you 



40 PL A TO. 

knew what a fortune I have made. I got a hundred 
and fifty minse in Sicily alone, though Protagoras was 
there at the same time." 

" And where did you make most 1 " asks So- 
crates. " I suppose at Sparta, for you have been there 
oftenest." 

" No," says Hippias; " not a penny could I get from 
the Spartans, though they have plenty of money. 
Indeed they care little for Astronomy or Music, or any 
new sciences ; and as for Mathematics, they can hardly 
'jount. The only thing they cared about was Archaeo- 
logy — the genealogies of their gods and heroes, and so 
forth ; and they were also greatly pleased with a lecture 
I gave in the form of advice from Nestor to Neoptole- 
mus on the choice of a profession." 

" By the way," says Socrates, suddenly, " there is 
one question which I want answered, and I have been 
waiting till I could find one of you wise men to tell 
me— What is the Beautiful?" 

Hippias at first answers that a fair maiden is a beau- 
tiful thing ; but Socrates shows that this is merely 
a relative term, and that compared with a goddess 
she would be ugly, just as the wisest man is an ape 
compared with a god. There must be someTorm 01 
Essence which makes a maiden or a lyre beautiful. 
It is not " gold " (as Hippias foolishly suggests), for 
then Phidias would have made Athene's face of gold 
instead of ivory : nor is it " the suitable," for that only 
causes things in their right place to appear beautiful, 
and does not really make them so. Nor, again, does 
the glowing description of a prosperous life according 



HIP PI AS. 41 

to Greek ideas, which is the next definition volunteered, 
satisfy Socrates. 

" It is a beautiful thing, when a man has lived in 
health, wealth, and honour, to reach old age, and having 
buried his parents handsomely, to be buried splendidly 
by his descendants." * 

Such vague language tells us nothing. Again, 
Eeauty is not " the useful," nor is it even " power for 
the production of good," for this would make goodness 
distinct from beauty. And lastly, Eeauty is not 
simply " that which pleases our sight and hearing." 
And then by an argument — more subtle than the occa- 
sion seems to require — Socrates shows that the plea- 
sures from the other senses should not be excluded. 

Finally, the question is left unanswered, and Hippias 
expresses his dissatisfaction at these " shreds and par- 
ings of argument." A man (be thinks) should take a 
larger view of debate, and learn to make a telling 
speech in court, instead of wasting time on this minute 
criticism, which profits him nothing. j| 

No doubt, Socrates replies, his own doubts and 
difficulties, which some strange power compels him to 
make known, seem small and valueless to a wise man 
like Hippias. It has always been his unhappy destiny 
to seek and inquire, and be reviled by the world for 
doing so ; but this discipline must be endured, if the 
result is his own improvement. In any case, this 
discussion .has had one advantage, for it lias taught him 
the truth of the old proverb, that " What is beautiful 
is difficult." 

* Whewell's Platonic Dialogues, ii. 101. 



4:2 PL-, 

In :Lr Dialogue known as the •' Lessee " H:??:as, 
we again meet that philosopher, who has just deli- 
veied lecture on Homei : At! lei is, and who boasts 
that he can talk ::: all subjects and answer all ques- 
tions that niay he asked ; in fact, he is a professor of 
every science. Upon this, Sock ra reminds him that 
on his last appearance at Olynipia he had worn a 
tunic and embroidered girdle which he had woven 
himself, and a ring which he had engraved with his 
own hand: and had brought with him a quantity 
.: hia own writings in raise nd prose, and; more 
lerful than all, an Art of [Memory, which he had 
himself inveL: 

The question on which Socrates wishes now to be 
enlightened by Hippias is the characters of the two 
heroes of the Iliad and Lyssey. Hippias maintains 
that Achilles is nobler than Ulysse ight- 

forward, and not mendacious. But Socrates objects 
:: bhk ; the mendacious man is capable, intelligent, 
and wise : if k man cannot tell a lie on occasion, he 
vs his igwoianee. Those who do wr ; n g w : 'illy 
are better than those who do wi rag thi High irnorance 
or a g i n - : I heir will — st as to he w flfully UDgraceful 
than to be really awkward ; an ^xxl 

runner can run fast n alow, and a good archer hi: :r 

s the mazk — hen he chooses. 

Again, Socrates sontinues, if justice is a mental 
capacity, the more capable mind is the more just : and 

sh a mind, being competent :: exercise itself in 
good or evilj will, if it Iocs evil, do it willingly; 



EU THY DEM US. 43 

and therefore the wilful wrong-doer is the good 
man. 

And with this gross paradox — established by argu- 
ments as sophistical as any which Socrates has else- 
where exposed — the Dialogue ends. He confesses 
himself to he puzzled and bewildered by the conclu- 
sion at which they have arrived ; but (he adds) it is 
no great wonder that a plain simple man like himself 
should be puzzled, if the great and wise Hippias is 
puzzled as well. 

ETTTHYDEMrS. 

Kb where is Plato's humour more sustained than in 
this Dialogue, portions of which seem to have been 
written in a spirit of broad farce. The arrogance and 
self-conceit of the two principal personages, the mock 
humility of Socrates and the impatience of Ctesippus, 
form a contrast of character as amusing as a scene in 
a clever comedy. 

Euthvdemus and Dionysodorus are introduced as 
two brothers, possessed, by their own a Aunt, of uni- 
versal genius — able to use their sword? and light in 
armour — masters, also, of legal fence, and professors of 
" wrangling " generally — able and willing, moreover, 
to give lessons in speaking, pleading, and writing 
speeches. But all these accomplishments are now, as 
they frankly tell Socrates, matters of merely secondary 
consideration. 

"Indeed," I said, "if such occupations are regarded by 
you as secondary, what must the principal one be ? Tell 
me, I beseech you, what that noble study is," 



44 PL A TO. 

" The teaching of virtue, Socrates," he replied, " is our 
principal occupation ; and we believe that we can impart 
it better and quicker than any man." * 

" My God ! " I said, " and where did you learn that ? I 
always thought, as I was saying just now, that your chief 
accomplishment was the art of fighting in armour ; and 
this was what I used to say of you, for I remember that 
this was professed by you when you were here before. But 
now, if you really have the other knowledge, forgive me : 
I address you as I would superior beings, and ask you to 
pardon the impiety of my former expressions. But are 
you quite sure about this, Dionysodorus and Euthydemus ? 
the promise is so vast, that a feeling of incredulity will 
creep in. 

" You may take our word, Socrates, for the fact." 

" Then I think you happier in having such a treasure 
than the great king is in the possession of his kingdom. 
And please to tell me whether you intend to exhibit this 
wisdom, or what you will do." 

" That is why we are come hither, Socrates ; and our 
purpose is not only to exhibit, but also to teach any one 
who likes to learn." — J. 

A circle ig formed, and young Cleinias, a grandson 
of Alcibiades, is selected as the victim to be improved 
by their logic, and is questioned accordingly as to his 
ideas of knowledge and ignorance. The poor youth is 
puzzled and confounded by their ingenious question- 
ing, and contradicts himself almost immediately ; but 
Socrates good-naturedly reassures him by telling him 
that his tormentors are not really in earnest, and that 
their jests are merely a sort of prelude to graver mys- 
teries to which he will be presently admitted, as soon 
as he has learnt the correct use of terms. Then 
Socrates, with the gracious permission of the two 



EUTHYDEMUS. 45 

Sophists, gives an example of his own method, and 
by a series of easy questions elicits from Cleinias the 
admission that wisdom is the only good, that ignorance 
is evil, and that to become wise is at present his heart's 
desire. 

Then Euthydemus begins again. " So you want 
Cleinias to become wise, and he is not wise yet ? " 
Socrates admits this. " Then you want the boy to be 
no longer what he is — that is, you want him to be done 
away with 1 A nice set of friends you must all be ! " 

Socrates is amazed at this retort ; and Ctesippus, 
who is a warm friend of Cleinias, is most indignant, and 
calls the Sophists a pair of liars in plain language. To 
this Euthydemus replies that there is no such thing 
as a lie, and that contradiction is impossible. The 
dispute is growing warm, when Socrates interposes. 
There is no use, he says, in quarrelling about words ; 
if by " doing away with him " the strangers mean that 
they will make a new man out of Cleinias, by all means 
let them destroy the youth, and make l^im wise, and 
all of us with him. 

But if you young men do not like to trust yourselves 
with them, then, fiat experimentum in cor pore senis ; here 
I offer my old person to Dionysodorus : he may put me 
into the pot, like Medea the Colchian, kill me, pickle me, 
eat me, if he will only make me good. Ctesippus said : 
" And I, Socrates, am ready to commit myself to the 
strangers ; they may skin me alive, if they please (and I 
am pretty well skinned by them already), if only my skin 
is made at last, not like that of Marsyas, into a leathern 
bottle, but into a piece of virtue. And here is Dionyso- 
dorus fancying that I am angry with him, when I am 



46 PLATO. 

really not angry at all. I do but contradict him when he 
seems to me to he in the wrong ; and you must not con- 
found abuse and contradiction, O illustrious Dionysodorus; 
for they are quite different things." 

" Contradiction ! " said Dionysodorus ; " why, there never 
was such a thing." — J. 

And then he proves in his own fashion that false- 
hood has no existence, and that a man must either say 
what is true or say nothing at all. 

One absurd paradox follows another ; and the two 
brothers venture on the most extravagant assertions. 
According to them, neither error nor ignorance are 
possible ; and they themselves have known all things 
from their birth — dancing, carpentering, cobbling — 
nay, the very number of the stars and sands ; till even 
Socrates loses patience, and Ctesippus cannot disguise 
his disgust at their effrontery. 

Several passages of arms take place, of which the 
following may serve as an instance : — 

" You say," asks Euthydemus of Ctesippus, " that you 
have a dog ? " 

61 Yes, a villain of a one," said Ctesippus. 

" And he has puppies ? " 

" Yes, and they are very like himself." 

"And the dog is the father of them ? " 

" Yes/' he said, " certainly." 

" And is he not yours ? " 

" To be sure he is." 

" Then he is a father, and he is yours ; ergo, he is your 
father, and the puppies are your brothers." 

" Let me ask you one little question more," said Dio- 
nysodorus, quickly interposing, in order that Ctesippus 
might not get in his word— "you beat this dog?" 



EU THY D EMUS. 47 

Ctesippus said, laughing, " Indeed I do ; and I only wish, 
that I could beat you instead of him." 

" Then you beat your father," he said. 

I should have had more reason to beat yours, said 
Ctesippus ; " what could he have been thinking of when 
he begat such wise sons ? Much good has this father of you 
and other curs got out of your wisdom." — J. 

More arguments are advanced, in which, the perver- 
sion of words is no less gross and palpable than in the 
passage above quoted — even to the most illogical mind. 
The fallacies, indeed, are generally so transparent as 
hardly to require serious refutation. The bystanders, 
however, are represented as being marvellously pleased 
at the remarkable wit and ingenuity of the two 
brethren ; and Socrates professes to be overcome by 
this display of their powers of reasoning. He makes 
them a speech in which he gravely compliments them 
on their magnanimous disregard of all opinions besides 
their own, and their " kind and public-spirited denial 
of all differences, whether of white or black, good or 
evil." 

" But what appears to me to be more than all is, that this 
art and invention of yours is so admirably contrived that 
in a very short time it can be imparted to any one. I 
observe that Ctesippus learned to imitate you in no time. 
Now this quickness of attainment is an excellent thing ; 
but at the same time I would advise you not to have any 
more public entertainments — there is a danger that men 
may undervalue an art which they have so easy an oppor- 
tunity of learning : the exhibition would be best of all, if 
the discussion were confined to your two selves ; but if there 
must be an audience, let him only be present who is will- 
ing to pay a handsome fee ; — you should be careful of this 



48 PLATO. 

— and if you are wise, you will also bid your disciples dis- 
course witli no man but you and themselves. For only 
what is rare is valuable ; and water, which, as Pindar says, 
is th*. best of all things, is also the cheapest. And now I 
have only to request that you will receive Cleinias and me 
arao * your pupils." — J, 



CHAPTER ITl 

SOCRATES AND HIS FRIENDS. 
SYMPOSIUM — PH^EDRUS — APOLOGY — CRITO — PELEDO. 

" There neither is, nor shall there ever be, any treatise of Plato. The 
opinions called by the name of Plato are those of Socrates in the days of 
his youthful vigour and glory."— Plato, Ep. ii. 314 (Grote). 

Socrates, in whom, as we have seen, Plato thus merges 
his own personality, and who is the spokesman in 
nearly every Dialogue, was the son of a sculptor at 
Athens, and was born in the year B.C. 468. He left 
his father's workshop at an early age, and devoted 
himself to the task of public teaching, — being, as he 
believed, specially commissioned by the gods to ques- 
tion and cross-examine all he met. Accordingly he 
might be found, day after day, in the workshops, in 
the public walks, in the market-place, or in the Palaes- 
tra, hearing and asking questions ; careless where or 
when or with whom he talked. His personal ugliness 
— about which he makes a joke himself in the " Theae- 
tetus " — his thick lips, snub nose, and corpulent body, 
and besides this, his mean dress and bare feet, made 
him, perhaps, the most remarkable figure in Athens, 
especially when contrasted with the rich dresses and 
a. 0. vol. xix. D 



50 PL A TO. 

classic features of the youths who often followed him. 
Yet under that Silenus mask (as Alcibiades described 
it) was concealed the image of a god. None who had 
ever heard him speak could easily forget the steady 
gaze, the earnest manner, and, above all, the impas- 
sioned words which made their hearts burn within 
them as they listened. Many youths would approach 
the circle which always formed whenever Socrates 
talked or argued, from mere curiosity or as a resource 
to pass away an hour • and at first they would look 
with indifference or contempt on the mean and poorly- 
dressed figure in the centre ; but gradually their inte- 
rest was aroused, their attention grew fixed, and then 
their hearts beat faster, their eyes swam with tears, and 
their very souls were touched and thrilled by the voice 
of the charmer. They came again and again to listen; 
and so by degrees that company of friends was formed, 
whose devotion and affection to their master is the 
best testimony to the magic power of his words. 

Among these followers might be found men of every 
shade of character — the reckless and ambitious Critias, 
the sceptic Pyrrho, the pleasure-seeking Aristippus, 
"the madman " Apollodorus, and Euclid, who came 
constantly twenty miles from Megara, although a decree 
at that time existed that any Megarian found in Athens 
should be put to death. Above all, Alcibiades was a 
constant companion of Socrates ; and men wondered 
at the friendship between this strangely-assorted pair — 
literally " Hyperion to a Satyr," — the ugly barefooted 
philosopher, and the graceful youth, the idol of the rising 
generation, whose brilliant sayings were quoted, whose 



THE SYMPOSIUM. 51 

wild escapades were laughed at, whose figure artists 
loved to model for their statues of Hermes, and whose 
very lisp became the fashion of the day. Surrounded 
by flatterers and admirers, Alcibiades found one man 
who paid him no compliments, who cared nothing foi 
his rank and accomplishments, yet whose words had the 
effect of exciting all that was noble in his nature. A 
strong attachment grew up between the two, and they 
shared the same tent, and messed together in the winter 
siege of Potidsea. Alcibiades himself tells us, in the 
Dialogue which follows, how easily Socrates bore the in- 
tense cold of those northern regions, and how, " with 
his bare feet on the ice, and in his ordinary dress, he 
marched better than any of the other soldiers who had 
their shoes on." His personal courage was also re- 
markable. On one occasion he saved Alcibiades' life 
at the risk of his own ; and in the disastrous retreat 
after the battle of Delium, Ave are told that, while all 
around him were hurrying in wild flight, he walked as 
unmoved " as if he were in the streets of Athens, 
stalking like a pelican, and rolling his eyes, while he 
calmly contemplated friends and foes." 

Though Socrates thus discharged his duties as a sol- 
dier, he only twice, in the course of his long life, took 
any prominent part in politics. The first occasion was 
when he opposed the unjust sentence of death passed 
by the assembly against the generals after the battle of 
Arginusae; and again when, at the peril of his own 
life, he refused to obey the order of the Thirty Tyrants, 
and arrest an innocent man. The " divine voice," of 
which he speaks so frequently, and which 'interfered 



52 PL A TO. 

and checked him at any important crisis of his life, 
had forbidden him to take part in the affairs of the 
state. He was, however, devoted to Athens; and 
except on military service, we are told that he never 
left the city walls. Two Thessalian princes once tried 
to tempt him, by lavish offers of money, to settle at 
their courts ; but he replied with noble independence 
that it did not become him to accept benefits which he 
could never hope to return, and that his bodily wants 
were few, for he could buy four measures of meal for 
an obolus at Athens, and there was excellent spring- 
water to be got there — for nothing. 

One secret of the influence exercised by Socrates lay 
in his genial humour, and in his entire freedom from 
conventionality. He was not (he says himself) as 
other men are. He conversed in the open air with all 
chance-comers, rich and j)oor alike, instead of immur- 
ing himself in a lecture-room. He would take no pay, 
while the Sophists round him were realising fortunes. 
Instead of wasting time in the barren field of science, 
or wearying his hearers with the subtleties of rhetoric, 
he discussed the great practical questions of life and 
morality, and, as Cicero said, ^brought down philo- 
sophy from heaven to earth." What is Truth? What 
is Virtue? What is Justice ;— or, as he put it him- 
self, " All the good and evil that has befallen a man in 
his home," — such were the subjects of his daily conver- 
sation. He was the first who openly asserted that 

" The proper study of mankind is man ;" — 

that is, man's nature and happiness, his virtues and 



THE SYMPOSIUM. 53 

his vices, his place in creation, and the end and object 
of his life. 

In the defence which Plato puts into his mouth at 
his trial, Socrates gives an account of what he con- 
ceived to he his own mission. His friend Chaerephon 
had asked the priestess of Delphi " if there was any 
man on earth wiser than Socrates'?" and the oracle had 
replied that there was none. Socrates then resolved 
himself to test the truth of this reply, and accordingly 
he had cross-examined statesmen, poets, philosophers, 
— all, in short, who had the reputation of wisdom in 
their profession, — and he had found that their pre- 
tended knowledge was only ignorance, that God alone 
was wise, that human wisdom was worthless, and that 
among men he was wisest who, like himself, 

" Professed 
" To know this only, that he nothing knew." * 

This was the great point of contrast between Socra- 
tes and those professors of universal knowledge, the 
Sophists. In their presence he always assumed the 
humble position of a man " intellectually bankrupt," 
who knows nothing, and who is seeking for informa- 
tion. He addresses some master of rhetoric or science 
w T ith a modest and deferential air ; he will take it as 
an infinite obligation if the great man will condescend 
to relieve his doubts by answering a few easy questions 
on some (apparently) obvious question of morality; 
and, of course, the Sophist, to save his own reputa- 
tion, has no alternative but to comply. Then Socra- 

* Milton, Par. Reg., iv. 294. 



54 PLATO. 

tes, like a skilful barrister, leads his unsuspecting 
victim on through a series of what seem innocent ques- 
tions, yet all bearing indirectly on the main point of 
the argument, till at last his opponent is landed in 
some gross absurdity or contradiction. This " irony " 
has been well termed " a logical masked battery," and 
is more or less a feature in every Dialogue of Plato. 

The humour, the genial temper, and the quiet self- 
possession of Socrates, must have made him a welcome 
guest in many houses ; and in the Dialogue called 
" The Banquet " (Symposium), we have a sketch of the 
philosopher " at home," joking with his friends, and en- 
tering into the humour of the hour ; and showing that, 
though he could abstain, he could also, if the occasion 
required it, drink as hard' and as long as any reveller 
in Athens. A goodly company are assembled at Aga- 
thon's house. There is the host, a handsome young 
dilettante poet : there is Phaedrus, another young as- 
pirant in literature : there is Pausanias the historian, 
and Aristophanes the comic poet, apparently on the 
best of terms with the philosopher whom he had ridi- 
culed so unsparingly in the " Clouds : " there is a 
doctor, Eryximachus, genial and sociable, but " pro- 
fessional " throughout : there is Socrates himself, who 
has put on sandals for the occasion, and who comes 
late, having fallen into a trance on the way ; and 
lastly, there is his satellite Aristodemus, — " the little 
unshod disciple," — who gives the history of this sup- 
per-party some time after to his friend Apollodorus. 

When the meal is ended, and the due libations have 
been poured, and a hymn sung to the gods, Pausanias 



THE SYMPOSIUM. 55 

proposes that instead of drinking and listening to the 
flute-girl's music — ("she may play to herself," says 
the doctor, considerately, " or to the women inside, if 
she prefers it ") — they shall pass a sober evening, and 
that each of the guests in turn shall make a speech in 
praise of Love — hitherto a much-neglected deity. This 
prudent proposal is readily accepted by the company, 
many of whom have hardly recovered from the effects 
of the last night's carouse. 

Phsedrus accordingly begins, in a high-flown poetic 
style, and praises Love as being the best and oldest of 
the gods, and the source of happiness in life and death. 
It is Love (he says) that inspires such heroism as that 
of Alcestis, who died to save her husband's life, — 
unlike that " cowardly harper" Orpheus, who went 
alive to Hades after his wife, and was justly punished 
afterwards for his impertinence. Love, again — 
passing that of women — inspired Achilles, who 
" foremost fighting fell " to avenge his friend Patro- 
clus, and was carried after death to the islands of the 
blest. 

Pausanias follows in the same vein, but distin- 
guishes between the ignoble and fleeting love of the 
body and the pure and lasting love of the soul. 

Aristophanes should properly have spoken next, 
" but either he had eaten too much, or from some other 
cause he had the hiccough." The doctor recommends 
him to drink some water, or, if that fails, to " tickle ' 
his nose and sneeze ; " meanwhile he delivers his own 
speech — from a medical point of view — and shows 
how Love, like a good and great physician, reconciles 



56 PLATO. 

conflicting elements, and produces harmony both in 
the physical world and in mankind. 

Then Aristophanes (who has used the doctor's 
remedy) opens, as he says, a new line of argument, 
and gives a whimsical account of the origin of the sexes, 
which reads as if Plato meant it as a parody of his 
own myths. Once upon a time (he says) man had 
three sexes and a double nature : besides this, he was 
perfectly round, and had four hands and four feet, — 
one head, with two faces looking opposite ways, set on 
a single neck. When these creatures pleased, they 
could walk as men do now, but if they wanted to go 
faster, they would roll over and over with all their four 
legs in the air, like a tumbler turning somersaults ; 
and their pride and strength were such that they made 
open war upon the gods. Jupiter resented their in- 
solence, but hardly liked to kill them with thunder- 
bolts, as the gods would then lose their sacrifices. At 
last he hit upon a plan. " I will cut them in two," 
he said, " so that they shall walk on two legs instead 
of four. They will then be only half as insolent, but 
twice as numerous, and we shall get twice as many 
sacrifices." This was clone, and the two halves are 
continually going about looking for one another;* and 
if we mortals (says Aristophanes, with a comic air of 
apprehension) are not obedient to the gods, there is 

* " He is the half part of a blessed man, 
Left to be finished by such a she ; 
And she a fair divided excellence 
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him." 

- - Shakspeare, ' ' King John. '* 



THE SYMPOSIUM. 57 

a danger that we shall be split up again, and we shall 
have to go about in basso-relievo, like those figures 
with only half a nose which you may see sculptured 
on our columns. 

Agathon, the young tragic poet, then takes up 
the parable. Love is the best and fairest of the gods, 
walking in soft places, with a grace that is all his own, 
and nestling among the flowers of beauty. Again, 
Love is 

"the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods ; desired 
by those who have no part in him, and precious to those 
who have the better part in him ; parent of delicacy, 
luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace ; careful of the 
good, uncareful of the evil. In every word, work, wish, 
fear — pilot, helper, defender, saviour ; glory of gods and 
men." — J. 

Lastly, Socrates tells them a story, which he has 
heard from Diotima, " a wise woman." Love is not 
in reality a god at all, but a spirit which spans the 
gulf between heaven and earth, carrying to the gods 
the prayers of men, and to men the commands of 
the gods. He is the child of Plenty and Poverty. 
Like his mother, he is always poor and in misery, 
without house or home to cover him ; like his father, 
" he is a hunter of men, and a bold intriguer, philoso- 
pher, enchanter, sorcerer, and sophist," hovering be- 
tween life and death, plenty and want, knowledge and 
ignorance. Love is something more than the desire of 
beauty ; — it is the instinct of immortality in a mortal 
creature. Hence parents wish for children, who shall 
come after them, and take their place and preserve their 



58 PLATO. 

names ; and the poet and the warrior are inspired by 
the hope of a fame which shall live for ever. And Dio- 
tima (continues Socrates) unfolded to me greater myster- 
ies than these, He who has the instinct of true love, and 
can discern the relations of true beauty in every form, 
will go on from strength to strength until at last the 
vision is revealed to him of a single science, and he 
" will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty 
— in the likeness of no human face or form, but ab- 
solute, simple, separate, and everlasting — not clogged 
with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colours 
and vanities of human life." N 

The murmur of applause with which this speech is 
greeted has hardly died away, when a loud knocking 
is heard at the outer gate, and the voice of Alcibiades 
shouting for Agathon. Presently he staggers in, at 
the head of a troop of revellers, flushed with wine, and 
crowned with a wreath of ivy-leaves and violets. Though 
he is drunk already (as he tells the company), he orders 
one of the slaves to fill a huge wine-cooler " holding 
more than two quarts," which he drains, and then has 
it filled again for Socrates, who also empties it. " Why 
are they so silent and sober ?" Alcibiades asks; and 
Agathon explains to him that they have all been 
making speeches in praise of Love, and that it will be 
his turn to speak next. 

Alcibiades readily assents; but instead of taking Love 
as his topic, he gives an account of his intercourse with 
Socrates. His face (he says) is like those masks of 
Silenus, which conceal the image of a god : he is as 
ugly as the satyr Marsyas ; but, like Marsyas, he charms 



THE SYMPOSIUM. 59 

the souls of all who hear him with the music of his 
words. " I myself am conscious" (Alcibiades continues) 
" that if I did not shut my ears against him, and fly 
from the voice of the charmer, he would enchain me 
until I grew old sitting at his feet. For he makes me 
confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the 
needs of my own soul, and occupying myself with the 
affairs of the Athenians ; therefore I stop my ears, and 
tear myself away from him. He is the only person who 
ever made me feel ashamed of myself — a feeling which 
you might think was not in my nature, and there is 
no one else who has that effect on me. . . . And 
oftentimes I wish he were dead ; and yet I know that I 
should be much more sorry than glad, if he were to die." 

Then he goes on to tell some anecdotes of the tem- 
perance of Socrates, his endurance of fatigue, and his 
personal courage ; and he assures then', in conclusion, 
that they will never fin a any other man who in the 
least resembles this wonderful being. 

Again the doors are violently opened, and a fresh 
band of revellers enter. All is now confusion and 
uproar. Phaedrus, the physician, and some of the 
more sober spirits, wisely take their departure ; while 
the few who remain settle down to make a night of it. 
Aristodemus (who tells the story) falls asleep himself, 
and is only awakened by the cocks crowing at day- 
break. All the last night's party have gone, or are 
asleep on their couches in the room, except Agathon, 
Aristophanes, and Socrates. These three are still jess- 
ing a large wine -cup from one to the other; and 
Socrates is giving the two dramatists a lecture on their 



60 PL A TO. 

own art, and proving to his own satisfaction that the 
genius of Tragedy and Comedy is the same. His 
hearers are much too sleepy to argue with or contra- 
dict him ; and at last the wine takes effect on Aris- 
tophanes, who drops under the tahle, where Agathon 
soon follows. Socrates puts them to sleep, and then 
goes tranquilly on his way — takes his bath at the 
Lyceum, and passes the day as usual. 

The following Dialogue, though its main purpose is 
an attack upon the popular passion for Ehetoric, is 
perhaps more interesting as a social picture : — 



It is a hot summer afternoon, and Socrates meets 
young Phsedrus (who was one of the guests at Aga- 
thon's banquet) walking out for air and exercise be- 
yond the city walls, for he has been sitting since dawn 
listening to the famous rhetorician Lysias. Socrates 
banters him on his admiration for Lysias, and at last 
extorts from him the confession that he has the actual 
manuscript of the essay which he had heard read 
hidden under his cloak ; and, after some assumed 
reluctance, Phsedrus consents that they shall walk on 
to some quiet spot where they can read it together. 
So they turn aside from the highroad, and follow the 
stream of the Ilissus — cooling their feet in the water 
as they walk — until they reach a charming resting- 
place, shaded by a plane-tree, where the air is laden 
with the scents and sounds of summer, and the agnus 
castus, with its purple and white blossoms, is in full 



PHjEDRUS. 61 

bloom ; while above them the cicalas are chirruping, 
and at their feet is the soft grass and the cool water, 
with images of the Nymphs who guard the spot. 

" My dear Phsedrus," says Socrates, " you are an 
admirable guide." 

"You, Socrates, are such a stay-at-home, that you 
know nothing outside the city walls, and never take 
a country walk." 

" Yery true," says Socrates ; " trees and fields tell me 
nothing : men are my teachers ; * but only tempt me 
with the chance of a discussion, and you may lead me 
all round Attica. Eead on." And Phsedrus accord- 
ingly reads the formal and rhetorical essay to which 
he had been listening in the morning. It is on a 
somewhat wasted theme — the advantages of a sober 
friendship, which lasts a lifetime, over the jealousies 
and torments caused by a spasmodic and fleeting love. 

Socrates, with an irony which even Phsedrus sees 
through, professes to be charmed with the balanced 
phrases and the harmonious cadence of the essay which 
has just been read ; but he hints that, if he is allowed 
to use a few commonplaces, he too might add some- 
thing to what Lysias has said • and then, inspired (as 
he says) by the genius loci, he delivers himself of a 
speech, denouncing, in a mock heroic style, the selfish 
infatuation and the wolf -like passion of the lover. 
But he almost immediately pretends to be alarmed at 

* Socrates would have agreed on this point with Dr Johnson. 
"Sir, when you have seen one green field, you have seen all 
green fields. Sir, I like to look upon men. — Let us walk down 
Cheapside." 



62 PL A TO. 

his own words ; for the divine monitor within tells him 
that he has insulted the majesty of Cupid, and forbids 
him to recross the brook until he has recanted his 
blasphemy. And so he does. 

lie had previously said that the lover was mad ; 
but this madness is, he explains, really akin to the 
inspiration of the prophet and Pythian priestess, or 
the frenzy of the poet, and is, in fact, the greatest 
blessing which heaven has given to men. And then 
he weaves his ideas of the origin of Love into a famous 
myth, which will be found elsewhere.* 

" I can fancy," says Socrates, laughingly, " that our 
friends the cicalas overhead are listening to our fine 
talk, and will carry a good report of us to their mis- 
tresses the Muses. For you must know that these little 
creatures were once human beings, long before the 
Muses were heard of; bat, when the Muses came, 
they forgot to eat or drink in their exceeding love of 
song, and so died of hunger ; but now they sing on for 
ever, and hunger and thirst no more. Let us talk, then, 
instead of idling all the afternoon, or going to sleep 
like a couple of slaves or sheep at a fountain-side." 

Then follows a severe criticism on the Ehetoric of 
the day. Truth and accurate definition, says Socrates, 
are the two first requirements of good speaking ; but 
neither of these are necessarily found in an essay like 
that of Lysias : and rhetoric, though it undoubtedly 
influences the rising generation, has done little in the 
way of perfecting oratory, which depends rather on the 
natural genius of the speaker than on any rules of art ; 

* See p. 156. 



pHjEDRUS. 63 

— indeed, Pericles himself learnt more from Anaxa- 
goras than from the Rhetoricians. 

Writing, continues Socrates, is far inferior to speech. 
Tt is a spurious form of knowledge ; and Thamuz, the 
old king of Egypt, was right in denouncing letters as 
likely to spoil men's memories, and produce an unreal 
and evanescent learning. Letters, like paintings, 
"preserve a solemn silence, and have not a word to 
say for themselves;" and, like hothouse plants, they 
come quickly to their bloom, and as quickly fade away. 
" Nobler far," he says, " is the serious pursuit of the 
dialectician, who finds a congenial soil, and there with 
knowledge engrafts and sows words which are able to 
help themselves and him who planted them, and are 
not unfruitful, but have in them seeds which may bear 
fruit in other natures nurtured in other ways — making 
the seed everlasting, and the possessors happy to the 
utmost extent of human happiness." * 

But severe as he is on ordinary Ehetorieians, he 
makes an exception in favour of Isocrates. Some divine 
instinct tells him that the temper of this young orator 
is cast in a finer mould than that of Lysias and his 
coterie ; and that some day, when he grows older, his 
genius will surpass all the speakers of his day. 

The heat of the day is now past, and the two 
friends prepare to depart ; but first Socrates offers a 
solemn prayer to the deities who guard this charming 
spot where they have been resting all the afternoon. 

" O beloved Pan, and all ye gods whose dwelling is in 
* Jowett's Plato, i. 614. 



64 PLATO. 

this place, grant me to be beautiful in soul, and all that 
I possess of outward things to be at peace with them 
within. Teach me to think wisdom the only riches. And 
give me so much wealth, and so much only, as a good and 
holy man could manage or enjoy. Pheedrus, want we any- 
thing more ? For my prayer is finished." 

Phced. " Pray that I may be even as yourself ; for the 
blessings of friends are commpn. ,; * 

It was hardly possible that Socrates should be popu- 
lar — puzzling and refuting all he met. " The world 
cannot make me out " (he says to Thesetetus), " there- 
fore they only say of me that I am an extremely strange 
being, who drive men to their wits' end." His passion 
for conversation in itself would annoy many ; and they 
probably regarded him as a garrulous and impertinent 
pedant, whom it was wise to avoid. " I hate this 
beggar who is eternally talking " (says Eupolis, the 
comedy-writer), a and who has debated every subject 
upon earth, except where to get his dinner." And often 
this vague feeling of dislike would grow into a strong 
personal hatred. For no man likes to be defeated on his 
own ground, or to be forced to confess himself ignorant 
of his favourite subject or theory, still less to be stulti- 
fied and made ridiculous before a crowd of bystanders. 
There were numbers who had suffered this humiliation 
from the unsparing " irony" of Socrates, and their col- 
lective enmity grew daily more formidable. Again, 
few who had seen the " Clouds " of Aristophanes acted 
some twenty years previously, had forgotten Socrates, 
as he appeared on the stage, — dangling in a basket be- 
tween heaven and earth, — the master of " the think- 

* Sewell's Dialogues of Plato, 199. 



APOLOGY. 65 

ing-shop," who was ready to imike, " for a considera- 
tion/ ' the worse appear the better reason. And some 
probability had been given to this picture by the recent 
career of two of his friends — probably at that time the 
most detested names in Athens — Alcibiades, the selfish 
renegade, and Critias, the worst of the Thirty Tyrants/ 
But after all, the great offence of Socrates (as Mr Grote 
points out *) was one which no society, ancient or mo- 
dern, ever forgives — his disdain of conventionality, and 
his disregard of the sovereign power of Custom. As we 
shall see in the ' Dialogues of Search,' he questions 
and criticises, and often destroys, the orthodox com- 
monplaces of morality, handed down from father to 
son, and consecrated in the eyes of the Athenians by 
tradition, and by those mighty household goddesses, 
" Use and Wont "— 

"Grey nurses, loving nothing new." 

In short, Socrates is a " dissenter," who will maintain 
his right of private judgment, and will speak what his 
conscience tells him to be right — though it be his own 
opinion against the world. Hence there grew up a 
widespread antipathy against this man who continually 
set at defiance the creed sanctioned by custom and 
society. This at length found its vent in the tablet of 
indictment, which was hung up one morning in the 
portico where such notices were displayed — " Socrates 
is guilty of crime ; first, for not worshipping the gods, 
whom the city worships, but introducing new divini- 

* Plato, i. 250. 
A. C. vol. xix. B 



66 PLATO. 

ties of his own ; secondly, for corrupting the youth. 
The penalty due is Death." 

His three accusers were Anytus, a wealthy trades- 
man ; Meletus, an obscure poet ; and Lycon, a rhetori- 
cian. Socrates himself seems to have been little moved 
by the danger of his position, and to have hardly 
wished for an acquittal. He felt that he had done his 
work, and that " it was no wonder that the gods should 
deem it better for him to die now than to live longer." * 
Certainly the tone of his Defence, as we have it from 
Plato, is more like a defiance than an apology ; and the 
speaker seems, as Cicero said, not so much a suppliant 
or an accused person, as the lord and master of his 
judges, t 

He begins by disclaiming any resemblance to that 
Socrates whom they had seen on the stage — the star- 
gazer and arch-Sophist — for he knows nothing of 
science, and had never taken a fee for teaching. His 
life has been passed in trying to find a wiser man than 
himself, and in exposing self-conceit and pretentious 
ignorance. To this mission he has devoted himself, in 
spite of poverty and ill-repute. 

Next he turns upon Meletus, his accuser, and cross- 
examines him in open court. " How can you," he 
asks, " call me the corrupter of the youth, when their 
fathers and brothers would bear witness that it is not 
so ? How can you call me the worshipper of strange 
gods, when the heresies of Anaxagoras are declaimed 
on the stage, and sold in our streets ? " 

* Xen. Mem., IV. viii. 4. + Cic. de Oral, i. 54. 



APOLOGY. 67 

Then lie turns to the judges again. As for death, — is 
it likely that one who has never shunned danger on 
the battle-field — who dared to record his solitary vote 
at the trial of the generals, in defence of the innocent 
and in defiance of the popular clamour — who had 
braved the anger of the Thirty Tyrants, — is it likely 
that he would desert the post of duty now ? 

" Athenians ! " he says solemnly, "I both love and 
honour you ; but as long as I live and have the power, 
I shall never cease to seek the truth, and exhort you to 
follow it. For I seem to have been sent by God to rouse 
you from your lethargy, as you may see a gadfly stinging 
a strong and sluggish horse. Perhaps you will be angry 
at being thus awakened from your sleep. Shake me off, 
then, and take your rest, and sleep on — for ever. I shall 
not try (as others have done) to move your pity by tears 
and prayers, or by the sight of my weeping children — for 
Socrates is not as other men are ; and if," he concludes, 
" men of Athens, by force of persuasion or entreaty I 
could overpower your oaths, then I should indeed be teach- 
ing you to believe that there are no gods, and convict myself, 
in my own defence, of not believing in them. But that is 
not the case, for I do believe that there are gods, and in a 
far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers 
believe in them. And to you and to God I commit my 
cause, to be determined by you as is best, both for you and 
for me." — J. 

It was not likely that any jury would be convinced 
by such a speech as this — marked throughout by a 
" contempt of court " unparalleled in Athenian history ; 
and accordingly Socrates was found guilty on both counts 
of the indictment — though by a majority of only five 



68 PL A TO. 

votes out of some 550. It now remained for himself 
to propose (as was the custom in such trials at Athens) 
some counter-penalty in place of death. 

But now that he is a condemned criminal, his tone 
becomes even more lofty than before. Of right, he 
says, they should have honoured him as a public bene- 
factor, and have maintained him, like an Olympic 
victor, at the expense of the nation. For his own part, 
he would not even trouble himself to propose an alter- 
native penalty ; but as his friends wish it, and will 
raise the sum (for he is too poor himself), then a fine 
of thirty minse is what he will offer as the price of 
life. 

Such a sum (<£120) was plainly an utterly inade- 
quate fine from an Athenian point of view, consider- 
ing the gravity of the crimes of which he was accused, 
and that the utmost penalty of the law was the alter- 
native. The question is again put to the vote, and 
Socrates is condemned to death — the majority this 
time being far larger than before. 

Then he makes his farewell address to his judges. 
They have condemned him because he would not con- 
descend to tears or entreaties ; and perhaps if he had 
done so he might have escaped. But on such terms 
he prefers death to life, and indeed it is good for him 
to die ; for death is either annihilation, where sense 
and feeling are not, or it is a passage of the soul from 
this world to another. In either case, he will be at 
rest. He will sleep for ever without a dream ; or he 
will find in Hades better men, and a juster judgment, 
and truer judges, than he has found on earth; and 



APOLOGY. 69 

there he will converse with Homer and Orpheus, and 
the great men of old ; questioning the heroic spirits 
whom he meets there, as has been his wont to ques- 
tion living men, and finding out who are wise and who 
are foolish below the earth. 

"What infinite delight," he concludes, "there would he 
in conversing with them and asking them questions ! For 
in that world they do not put a man to death for this, — 
certainly not. For besides being happier in that world 
than this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true. 

" Wherefore, ye judges, be of good cheer about death, 
and know this of a truth — that no evil can happen to a 
good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not 
neglected by the gods ; nor has my own approaching end 
happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die 
and be released was better for me ; and therefore the oracle 
gave no sign. For which reason also I am not angry with 
my accusers or condenmers ; they have done me no harm, 
though neither of them meant to do me any good ; and for 
this I may gently blame them. . . . 

" The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways 
— I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only 
knows." — J. 

So ends this famous defence which Plato has put into 
his master's mouth; and whether the substance of it 
was actually delivered or not, assuredly " few persons 
will be found to wish that Socrates should have de- 
fended himself otherwise." The account of his subse- 
quent imprisonment and death is given us in the two 
following Dialogues. 



70 PLATO. 

CRITO. 

Thirty days elapsed before the sentence passed on 
Socrates could be carried into effect. Every year the 
Athenians sent a vessel on a pilgrimage to Delos, in 
memory of the preservation of their city in the days 
of Theseus ; and from the moment that the priest of 
Apollo crowned the vessel before it left the harbour, to 
the hour of its return, there intervened a holy season, 
during which the city might be polluted by no exe- 
cutions. Now it happened that the vessel sailed on 
the day that Socrates was condemned, and his exe- 
cution was accordingly deferred for a month. 

His friends daily assembled in his prison, and the 
long hours were passed in conversation on the usual 
subjects. One morning Crito comes earlier than usual 
— when it is hardly light — and finds Socrates calmly 
sleeping. " Why have you come at this unusual time V 9 
asks Socrates on waking. " I bring sad news," is the 
reply ; " the sacred vessel has been seen off Cape 
Sunium on its way home, and will reach Athens by 
to-morrow." But Socrates is prepared for this. He 
has seen in a vision of the night u the likeness of a 
woman, fair and comely, clothed in white raiment, who 
called to him and said — " O Socrates, the third day 
hence to Pthia thou shalt go." He is inclined to be- 
lieve that the dream will prove true, and that on the 
third day he will be dead. 

Then Crito earnestly implores him to use the little 
time that is left in making his escape. Neither friends 
nor money will be wanting : the jailer can be bribed, 



CRITO. 71 

and the mouths of the Informers stopped with gold. 
He will find a home ready for him in Thessaly, where 
he will he loved and honoured. " It would he sheer 
folly," Crito continues, " to play into the hands of 
his enemies, and to leave his children outcasts on the 
world. If the sentence of death is carried out, it will 
he an ahsurd and miserahle end of a trial which ought 
to have heen Drought to another issue." 

But Socrates has only one answer to these arguments, 
which might have persuaded any hut himself. Would 
it he right or lawful for him to escape now 1 Shall he 
who for half a century has heen preaching ohedience 
to the law, now, in the hour of trial, stultify the precepts 
of a lifetime ? For all those years he has heen enjoy- 
ing the privileges of citizenship and the blessings of a 
free state, and shall he now he tempted by the fear of 
death to break his tacit covenant with the laws, and 
turn his back upon his city " like a miserable slave " ] 

He can fancy the spirit of the laws themselves up- 
braiding him : — 

" Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. 
Think not of life and children first, and of justice after- 
wards, but of justice first, that you may be justified before 
the princes of the world below. For neither will you nor 
any that belong to you be happier or holier or juster in this 
life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now, 
you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil ; 
a victim not of laws but of men. But if you go forth 
returning evil for evil and injury for injury, breaking the 
covenants and agreements which you have made with us, 
and wronging those whom you ought least to wrong — that 
is to say, yourself, your friends, your country, and us — we 



72 PLATO. 

shall be angry with you while you live, and our brethren, 
the laws in the world below, will receive you as an enemy, 
for they will know that you have done your best to destroy 
us. Listen, then, to us, and not to Crito." 

This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my 
ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic ; 
that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, &nd prevents me 
from hearing any other. And I know that anything more 
which you may say will be vain. Yet speak, if you have 
anything to say. 

Cr. I have nothing to say, Socrates. 

Soc. Then let me follow the intimations of the will of 
God.— J 

PH^DO. 

Two days after this, his friends assemble at the 
prison-doors for the last time, somewhat earlier than 
usual. There is a short delay, for the sheriffs have 
come to take the chains off the prisoner preparatory to 
his death. 

The jailer soon admits them, and " on entering " (says 
Phsedo, who had been present himself) "we found Socrates 
just released from chains, and Xanthippe sitting by him 
holding his child in her arms. When she saw us, she 
uttered a cry and said, as women will, '0 Socrates, this 
is the last time that either you will converse with your 
friends, or they with you !' Socrates turned to Crito and 
said, ' Crito, let some one take her home. , Some of Crito's 
people accordingly led her away, crying out and beating 
herself.' 7 — J. 

Socrates then proceeds to talk in his usual easy 
manner. He has several times been told in dreams 
" to make music ; " and he has accordingly been turn- 



piijEDO. 73 

ing some fables of iEsop into verse. " Tell Evenus 
this," lie says, " and bid him be of good cheer ; say 
that I would have him come after me, if he be a wise 
man, and not tarry ; and that to-day I am likely to be 
going, for the Athenians say I must." Then he con- 
siders the question — " Why, in a case where death is 
better than life, a man should not hasten his own 
end 1 " He finds the answer to be, Because man is a 
prisoner, and has no right to release himself, being, in 
fact, a sort of possession of the gods, who will summon 
him at their pleasure.* 

" Then," says Cebes, one of the party, " the wise 
man will sorrow and the fool rejoice at leaving his 
masters the gods, and passing out of life." 

" Not so," is the reply ; " for I am persuaded that I 
am going to other gods, who are wise and good, and 
also (I trust) to men departed, who are better than those 
I leave behind ; therefore I do not grieve, as otherwise 
I might, for I have good hope that there is yet some- 
thing awaiting the dead, and, as has been said of old, 
some far better lot for the good than for the wicked." 

He then explains the grounds on which he builds 
this hope of immortality. Death, he says, is the 
happy release of the soul from the body. In this life 
our highest and purest thoughts are distracted by cares 
and lusts, and diseases inherent in the flesh. He is 
wisest who keeps himself pure till the hour when the 
Deity Himself is pleased to release him. " Then shall 

* We may compare the argument used by Despair, and the 
answer of the Red Cross Knight, in Spenser (Fairy Queen, I. 
ix. 40, 41). 



74 PL A TO. 

the foolishness of the flesh be purged away, and 
we shall be pure, and hold converse with other pure 
souls, and recognise the pure light everywhere, which 
is none other than the light of truth." Hence the wise 
man leaves with joy a world where his higher and 
ethereal sense is trammelled by evil and impurity; and 
his whole life is but a preparation for death, or rather 
an initiation into the mysteries of the unseen world. 
Many, as they say, join the procession in such mys- 
teries ; but few are really chosen for initiation. 

No fear that our souls will vanish like smoke, or 
that the dead sleep on for ever, like Endymion. Our 
souls are born again ; and as life passes into death, so, 
in the circle of nature, the dead must pass into life ; 
for if this were not so, all things must at last be 
swallowed up in death. 

Again, we have in our minds latent powers of 
thought — ideas of beauty and equality — which are 
not given us at our birth, and which we cannot have 
learnt from experience. Such knowledge is but the 
soul's recollection of a previous state of existence. 

" Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realised."* 

It is only the mortal part of us (Socrates continues) 
that dies when earth returns to earth. The pure soul, 
herself invisible, departs to the invisible world— to 
the divine, the immortal, and the rational ; where she 
dwells in bliss, in company with the gods, released 
from the errors and folKes of men, their fears, their 

* Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality. 



PILE DO. 75 

unruly passions, and all other evils of humanity. But 
the impure soul fears to go down to Hades, and haunts 
the earth for a time like a restless ghost.* 

Then, by a further train of reasoning, Socrates con- 
cludes that the soul is beyond all doubt immortal and 
imperishable. This being so, a graver question fol- 
lows — " What manner of persons ought we ourselves 
to be?" "If death had been the end of all things, 
then the wicked would gain by dying ; for they would 
have been happily rid not of their bodies only, but of 
their own wickedness, together with their souls. But 
now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, no 
release or salvation from evil can be found except in 
the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom. For 
the soul, on her journey to the world below, carries no- 
thing with her but her nurture and education." After 
death comes the judgment ; the guardian angel of 
each soul conducts her through the road with many 
windings that leads to the place where all are tried. 
After this the impure soul wanders without a guide in 
helpless misery, until a certain period is accomplished, 
and then she is borne awny to her own place. But 
the pure soul, " arrayed in her proper jewels — tem- 
perance, and justice, and courage, and nobility, and 
truth " — dwells for ever in the glorious mansions re- 
served for the elect. 

* " Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp, 
Oft seen in eharnel-vaults and sepulchres, 
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave, 
As loth to leave the body that it loved." 

—Milton, "Comus," 470, 



76 PL A TO. 

Thus Socrates ends his noble profession of faith in 
a future life — with him half instinct, half conviction. 
His " Non omnis mortar " has a triumphant ring about 
it ; and, like the swans to whom he compares himself, 
" who sing more joyously on the day of their death 
than they ever did before," he rejoices in the thought 
of his speedy release from life, and looks confidently 
beyond the grave. 

The evening is fast drawing on, and the shadows 
are lengthening on the Attic hills, when Crito asks 
him if he has any last directions to give about his 
children or about his burial. " Bury me in any way 
you like," says Socrates, with a touch of his old humour; 
" but be sure that you get hold of me, and that I don't 
run away from you." Then he turns to the others 
and says with a smile, " I cannot make Crito believe 
that I am the same Socrates who have been talking 
and conducting the argument. He fancies that I am 
the other Socrates whom he will soon see — a dead 
body — and he asks, ' How lie shall bury mel' You 
must all be my sureties to Crito, that I shall go away, 
and then he will sorrow less at my death, and not be 
grieved when he sees my body burned or buried." 

Then he takes his bath, and bids farewell to his wife 
and children ; and by this time the sun is low in the 
heavens, and the jailer comes in to tell him that his 
hour is come — weeping himself as he utters the words. 

Soon the poison is brought. Socrates takes the cup, 
and 

"in the gentlest and easiest manner, without the least 
fear or change of colour or feature, looking at the man with 



PEJLDO. 11 

all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup 
and said, ' What do you say about making a libation out 
of this cup to any god 1 May I, or not 1 ' The man 
answered, 'We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as 
we deem enough.' 'I understand/ he said, 'yet I may 
and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from 
this to the other world : may this, then, which is my 
prayer, be granted to me.' Then, holding the cup to his 
lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. 
And hitherto most of us had been able to control our 
sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too 
that he had finished the draught, we could no longer for- 
bear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast ; 
so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for cer- 
tainly I was not weeping over him, but in the thought of 
my own calamity in having lost such a companion. Nor 
was I the first ; for Crito, when he found himself unable to 
restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I fol- 
lowed ; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been 
weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry which made 
cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness. 
* What is this strange outcry ? ' he said. ' I sent away the 
women mainly in order that they might not offend in this 
way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be 
quiet, then, and have patience/ When we heard that we 
were ashamed, and refrained our tears ; and he walked 
about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he 
lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man 
who gave him the poison now r and then looked at his feet 
and legs ; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and 
asked him if he could feel, and he said ' No ; ' and then 
his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that 
he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said, 
t When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end.' 
He was beginning to feel cold about the groin, when he 
uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said 



78 PL a to: 

(they were his last words), ' Crito, I owe a cock to Asclep- 
ius ; will you remember to pay the debt ? ' ' The debt 
shall be paid/ said Crito ; ' is there anything else ? ' There 
was no answer to this question ; but in a minute or two a 
movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him ; 
his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. 
Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom 1" may 
truly call the wisest and justest and best of all the men 
whom I have ever known." — J. 

So ends the " Phaedo ;" and as we close the volume, 
we feel as though we too had lost a friend, so simply 
and yet so touchingly has every detail of that last 
scene in the prison been painted for us by a master- 
hand. Even across the lapse of centuries the picture 
rises before us distinct and lifelike, as it was to the 
inind of the writer who described it, — the passionate 
grief of Apollodorus, the despair of Crito, the silent 
tears of Phaedo — even the jailer weeping, and turning 
away his face — and the composure meanwhile of the 
central figure of the group, talking cheerfully, and 
playing with Phaedo's hair, who is sitting next him. 
We can well understand the mingled feelings of the 
spectators of the scene. u I could hardly believe " 
(says Phaedo, telling the story to Echecrates) "that I 
was present at the death of a friend, and therefore I 
did not pity him ; his mien and his language were so 
noble and fearless in the hour of death, that to mo he 
appeared blessed. I thought that, in going to the 
other world, he could not be without a divine call, 
and that he would be happy, if any man ever was, 
when lie arrived there ; and therefore I did not pity 
him, as might seem natural at such a time. But 



PIIJEDO 79 

neither could I feel the pleasure which I usually felt 
in philosophical discourse. I was pleased, and I was 
also pained, because I knew that he was soon to die * 
and this strange mixture of feeling was shared by us 
all : we were laughing and weeping by turns, espe- 
cially the excitable Apollodorus." 

Cicero (who was by no means tender-hearted) de- 
clared that he could never read the " Phsedo " without 
tears ; and we all know the story of " the fair pupil 
of Ascham, who, while the horns were sounding and 
dogs in* full cry, sat in the lonely oriel with eyes rivet- 
ed to that immortal page which tells how meekly and 
bravely the first martyr of intellectual liberty took the 
cup from his weeping jailer." * 

, * Macaulay's Essay on Lord Bacon. 



CHAPTEE IV. 



DIALOGUES OF SEARCH. 



LACHES — CHARMIDES — LYSIS — MENO — EUTHYPHRO — 
CRATYLTTS — THE^TETUS. 



"Socrates used to ask questions, "but did not answer them, for he pro- 
fessed not to know." — Aristotle. 



In the Dialogues which follow, we have the negative- 
side of the teaching of Socrates strongly brought out. 
Both sides of the questions raised are fully argued by 
him, but no definite conclusion is arrived at. He never, 
indeed, assumes any attitude of authority. He is a 
searcher for truth, like the young men with whom he 
talks ; the only difference being that his search is more 
zealous and systematic than theirs. " We shall n (he 
says in the Thesetetus) " either find what we are 
looking for, or we shall get rid of the idea that we 
know what we really do not know. And we philo- 
sophers have plenty of leisure for our inquiries, for we 
are not tied down to time, like a barrister pleading 
in the law-courts, whose speech is measured by the 
clock." Socrates had begun, as he tells us, by cate- 
chising artisans and mechanics as to their arts and 
occupations (hence the constant allusions in the Dia- 



DIALOGUES OF SEARCH. 81 

logues to mechanical employments — shoemaking, 
swordmaking, and the like), and from them he had 
got clear and satisfactory answers. But he found that 
if he asked a man what was his real work or object in 
life, or what was the meaning of the moral terms so 
frequently in his mouth, he got only vague answers or 
contradictions. Hence the questions which he exam- 
ines in these ' Dialogues of Search' relate to the most 
familiar and obvious terms that meet us on the thresh- 
old of morality — Holiness, Courage, Temperance, and 
other cardinal virtues — qualities which many might 
possess themselves and easily recognise in others, but 
which they could not explain with any logical pre- 
cision. 

It is true that custom and tradition had given to 
these set phrases of morality a certain value and signi- 
ficance in the minds of those who used them ; but few 
had learned to define or analyse their full meaning, 
and Socrates was the first who brought them under a 
logical scrutiny — examining their various uses, fixing 
their strict sense, and referring the individuals to their 
proper class, or, in the words of Aristotle, rallying the 
stragglers to the main body of the regiment. 

In his arguments with the Sophists, as we have 
seen, Socrates shows his opponents no law. He proves 
himself a bitter and determined antagonist — turning 
where he can their own weapons against themselves, 
and leaving them to find out the fallacies in his state- 
ments i nor will he listen to any long defence from them, 
for, as he tells Protagoras, he has a short memory, and 
expects definite categorical answers. But when talk- 

a. c. vol. xix. JT 



82 PL A TO. 

ing, as in these c Dialogues of Search/ with some young 
noble of the rising generation, whose character is hardly 
formed and whose heart is still fresh and pure, the 
manner of Socrates entirely changes, and his voice 
softens ; he lays aside that terrible " irony " of his ; 
he adapts his questions to the youth's comprehen- 
sion, encourages and sympathises with his attempts 
to answer, and uses the easiest language and the 
homeliest illustrations to explain his meaning. 

We may take first the Dialogue entitled Laches, in 
which Courage — the instinct of a child and the habit 
of a man — is discussed. The speakers bear historical 
names. There is Lysimachus, the son of Aristides, 
and Melesios, son of Thucydides (not the historian, but 
a statesman contemporary with Themistocles) ; but the 
genius of the fathers has not in this case been inherited 
by their sons, who are plain respectable citizens of 
Athens, and nothing more. They are conscious, how- 
ever, of their own degeneracy, and complain that their 
education had been neglected, and that their fathers 
had been so much engrossed in affairs of state as to 
have neither time nor inclination to act as tutors to 
their own children. " Both of us," says lysimachus, 
" often talk to our boys about the many noble deeds 
which our fathers did in war and peace — but neither 
of us has any deeds of his own which he can show. 
Now w r e are somewhat ashamed of this contrast being 
seen by them, and we blame our fathers for letting us 
be spoiled in the days of our youth when they were oc- 
cupied with the concerns of others ; and this we point 
out to the lads, and tell them that they will not grow 



LACHES. 83 

up to honour, if they are rebellious and take no pains 
about themselves ; but that if they take pains they 
may become worthy perhaps of the names they bear." 
(The two youths, as was often the case, had been 
named after their grandfathers, Aristides and Thucy- 
dides.) 

In their doubt as to the best means of carrying out 
these good intentions, the two fathers come to Laches 
and Mcias — both distinguished generals and statesmen 
■ — and ask their advice in the matter ; more especi- 
ally as to whether the lessons of a certain swordsman, 
who has just been going through a trial of arms, are 
likely to be of use. The veterans discuss the merits of 
this new style of fencing, — just as two officers now 
might criticise the last improved rifle. Nicias is much 
in favour of the youths learning it, as it will usefully 
occupy their spare time, will be of real service in war, 
and will se't them up and give them a military air and 
carriage. But Laches has no opinion of this new- 
fangled invention, and thinks that if it had been 
worth anything, the Spartans, the first military power 
in Greece, would have adopted it. He had indeed him- 
self once been witness of a ridiculous scene in which 
this very swordsman had left his last invention — a 
spear with a billhook at the end of it — sticking fast 
in the rigging of the enemy's vessel, and was laughed 
at by friends and foes. "No," says Laches, " let us 
have simplicity in all tilings — in war as well as music : 
but these young men must learn something ; so let us 
appeal to Socrates, my old comrade in the battle-field, 
who has much experience of youth." 



84 PL A TO. 

Socrates, thus appealed to, joins in the discussion. 
His opinion is that they should find some wise teacher, 
not so much with a view to lessons in arms, as to a 
general education of the mind. For no trifling ques- 
tion, he says, is at issue. They are risking the most 
precious of earthly possessions — their children, upon 
whose turning out well or ill depends the welfare of 
the house. For his own part, he knows nothing of the 
matter. He is neither professor nor inventor himself, 
and is too poor to pay fees to the Sophists. Xicias 
and Laches are wealthier and wiser men than he ; and 
he will gladly abide by their decision, But why do 
their opinions differ? 

Nicias thinks they will be drawn into a Socratic 
argument, as usual, but is very willing to go through 
an examination ; and Laches, though not fond of 
arguing as a rule, is very ready to listen when the 
man is in harmony with his words, and willing there- 
fore to be taught by Socrates, whom he knows as not 
merely a talker, but a doer of brave deeds. 

Socrates thinks it will be better to consider, not 
so much the question of who are the teachers, as what 
they profess to teach, — namely, Virtue, or more espe- 
cially that part of it which most concerns them at 
present — Courage. Then, by a series of questions, 
he limits the vague definition first given by Laches, 
and proves to him that there may be other forms of 
courage as noble as that of the soldier who stands his 
ground in battle — such as the endurance of pain, 
or poverty, or reproach ; and it generally seems to be 
a certain wise strength of mind, the intelligent and 



CHARMIDES. 85 

reasonable fortitude of a man who foresees coming 
evil and can calculate the consequences of his acts, 
and is very different from the fearless courage of a 
child, or the insensate fury of a wild beast. But then 
the man who has this knowledge of good and evil, im- 
plied in the possession of real courage, must have also 
temperance and justice, and in fact all the virtues ; 
and this would contradict the starting-point of their 
discussion, in which they agreed that courage was 
only a part of virtue. 

" No," Socrates concludes ; "we shall have to leave 
off where we began, and courage must still be to us 
an unknown quantity. We must go to school again 
ourselves, and make the education of these boys our 
own education." 

The introduction to the Charmides is another speci- 
men of that dramatic description in which Plato 
excelled. " Yesterday evening," says Socrates, " I 
came back from the camp at Potidsea ; and having 
been a good while away, I thought I would go and 
look in at my old haunts. So I went into the Palaestra 
of Taureas, and there I found a number of persons, 
most of whom I knew, though not all. My visit was 
unexpected, and as soon as they saw me coming in 
they hailed me at once from all sides ; and Chserephon 
(who is a kind of lunatic, you know) jumped up and 
rushed to me, seizing my hand and exclaiming, " How 
did you escape, Socrates?" (I must explain that a 
battle had taken place at Potidsea not long before we 
left, the news of which had only just reached Athens.) 



86 PL A TO. 

" You see/' I replied, " that here I am." 
" The report was," said he, "that the fighting was very 
severe, and that several of our acquaintance had fallen." 
" That was too nearly the truth/' replied I. 
" I suppose you were there ? " said he. 
" I was." 
" Then sit down and tell us the whole story." — J. 

So Socrates sits down between Chaerephon and 
Critias, and answers their eager inquiries after absent 
friends. Then there enters a group of youths, laugh- 
ing and talking noisily, and among them is Charmides, 
a cousin of Critias, tall and handsome, and (so say his 
friends) " as fair and good within as he is without." 
He comes and sits near Socrates, who professes to 
know a charm that will cure a headache of which he 
has been complaining. This charm is a talisman given 
to Socrates (as he tells Charmides) by Zamolxis, phy- 
sician to the king of Thrace ; but which he is only 
allowed to use on the condition of his never attempt- 
ing to cure the body without first curing the soul, and 
then temperance in the one will produce health in the 
other. But the question is, " What is Temperance ? " 
It is not always what Charmides understands by it, the 
quietness of a gentleman who is never flurried and never 
noisy; nor is it exactly modesty, though very like it ; 
nor is it (as Critias defines it) " doing one's own busi- 
ness," even though our work as men be nobly and 
usefully done. Nor, again, is it true that the golden 
characters on the gates of Delphi, " Know thyself," 
simply meant, " Be temperate ; " nor is it a " science of 
sciences," as Critias again explains it — or rather, the 
knowledge of what a man knows and does not know. 



CHARMIDES. 87 

All knowledge is relative, and must have some object- 
matter ; and such, a universal knowledge as Critias 
would imply by temperance would in no way conduce 
to our happiness. 

Finally, Socrates confesses himself puzzled and 
baffled. They are no nearer the truth than at start- 
ing ; and the argument, so to speak, " turns round 
and laughs in their faces." He is sorry that Char- 
mides has learnt so little from him ; " and still more," 
he concludes — 

"am I grieved about the charm which I learned with 
so much pain and to so little profit from the Thracian, for 
the sake of a thing which is nothing worth. I think, 
indeed, that there is a mistake, and that I must be a bad 
inquirer ; for I am persuaded that wisdom or temperance 
is really a great good; and happy are you if you possess 
that good. And therefore examine yourself, and see 
whether you have this gift, and can do without the charm ; 
for if you can, I would rather advise you to regard me 
simply as a fool who is never able to reason out anything ; 
and to rest assured that the more wise and temperate you 
are, the happier you will be." 

Charmides said : " I am sure T do not know, Socrates, 
whether I have or have not this gift of wisdom and tem- 
perance ; for how can I know whether I have that, the 
very nature of which even you and Critias, as you say, are 
unable to discover ? (not that I believe you.) And further, 
I am sure, Socrates, that I do need the charm ; and, so far 
as I am concerned, I shall be willing to be charmed by you 
daily, until you say I have had enough." 

" Very good, Charmides," said Critias ; " if you do this I 
shall have a proof of your temperance — that is, if you allow 
vourself to be charmed by Socrates, and never desert him 
at all." 



88 PLATO. 

" You may depend on my following and not deserting 
him," said Charmides. " If you who are my guardian 
command me, I should be very wrong not to obey you." 

" Well, I do command you," he said. 

" Then I will do as you say, and begin this very day." 

—J. 

In the Lysis, the scene is again a Palaestra, near a 
school kept by Micon, a friend of Socrates. It is a 
half-holiday (like a saint's day in some of our public 
schools) in honour of the god Hermes ; and the boys 
are scattered round the courtyard, some wrestling, 
some playing at dice, and others looking on. Among 
these last is Lysis, of noble birth and of high promise, 
with his friend Menexenus. Socrates professes him- 
self charmed at the attachment of the two boys, and 
calls them very fortunate. All people, he says, have 
their different objects of ambition — horses, dogs, money, 
honour, as the case may be ; but for his own part he 
would rather have a good friend than all these put 
together. It is what he has longed for all his life, 
and here is Lysis already supplied. " But," he asks, 
" what is Friendship, and who is a friend 1 " 

Is it sympathy — is it, as the poets say, that " the 
gods draw like to like " by some mysterious affinity 
of souls ? In that case, the bad man can be no one's 
friend ; for he is not always even like himself — much 
less like any one else ; while the good man is self- 
sufficing, and therefore has no need of friends. Is not 
Difference rather the principle 1 Are not unlike char- 
acters attracted by a sense of dependence, and do not 
the weak thus love the strong, and the poor the rich] 



L YSIS. 89 

But this cannot be so always, for then by this very 
law of contraries the good would love the bad, and the 
just the unjust. No — there must be a stage of in- 
difference, between these two ; when one whose char- 
acter is hardly formed — who is neither good nor bad — 
courts the society of the good, from some vague desire 
of improvement. 

But Socrates is not satisfied yet. He thinks there 
must be some final principle or first cause of friend- 
ship which they have not discovered : "and here," he 
says, 

" I was going to invite the opinion of some older person, 
when suddenly we were interrupted by the tutors of Lysis 
and Menexenus, who came upon us like an evil apparition 
with their brothers, and bade them go home, as it was 
getting late. At first we and the bystanders drove them 
off, but afterwards, as they would not mind, and only went 
on shouting in their barbarous dialect, and got angry, and 
kept calling the boys (they appeared to us to have been 
drinking rather too much at the Hermsea, which made 
them difficult to manage), we fairly gave way, and broke 
up the company. I said, however, a few words to the boys 
at parting. Menexenus and Lysis, will not the bystand- 
ers go away and say, i Here is a jest : you two boys, and I, 
in old boy, who would fain be one of you, imagine ourselves 
to be friends, and we have not as yet been able to discover 
what is a friend ! ' " — J 

Aristotle aevotes two books of his " Ethics " to this 
much-debated question of Friendship — always roman- 
tic and interesting from a Greek point of view. He 
looks upon it in a political light, as filling up the void 
left by Justice in the state ; and he traces its appear- 



90 PLATO. 

ance in different forms in different governments. It is 
an extension of " Self-Love " — very different from 
Selfishness, — for a good man (he says) will give up 
honour and life and lands for his friend's sake, and 
yet reserve to himself something still more excellent 
— the glory of a noble deed.* But Aristotle can, no 
more than Plato, give the precise grounds for any 
friendship, except that it should not be based on 
pleasure or utility ; and we are told of his saying 
more than once to his pupils, " my friends, there is 
no friend ! " Perhaps, after all, Montaigne was right 
— friendship is inexplicable ; and the only reason that 
can be given for liking such a person is the one given 
by him, " Because it was he, because it was I." 

The Meno of Plato, introduced in the Dialogue 
which bears his name, is a very different character 
from the Meno of history — a traitor who did his best 
to embarrass the retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks. 
Plato represents him as a "Thessalian Alcibiades" — a 
rich young noble, the devoted pupil of the Sophists. 
He meets Socrates, and abruptly asks him the old 
question, whether Virtue can be taught ; and Socrates, 
as usual, professes ignorance. He is not a Gorgias, that 
he can answer such a question offhand " in the grand 
style." He does not even know what Virtue is, much 
less who are its teachers : and he adds, with mock 
humility, that there is a singular dearth of wisdom at 
Athens just now, for the rhetoricians have carried it 
all away with them to Thrace. Perhaps Meno will 

* Ethics, viii. ix, 



MENO. 91 

kindly enlighten him with the opinions of Gorgias on 
this difficult question ? 

Yes, Meno will tell him. Every age and condition 
of life has its special virtue. A man's virtue is states- 
manship, in which he will guard his own and his 
country's interests ; while " a woman's virtue is to 
order her house and keep what is within doors, and 
obey her husband ; " — a stay-at-home view of her duties 
which would find little favour with the modern advo- 
cates of female suffrage. 

But surely, objects Socrates, justice and temperance 
are needed by all ages and professions. Must there 
not be some one common element pervading these 
separate virtues, which are merely individuals of a 
class, like colours and figures'? Virtue, like health, 
must be a common quality, though it may take various 
forms. 

Meno then comes to understand that a definition is 
what is wanted, and accordingly quotes one from the 
poets. " Virtue is the desire of the honourable, and 
the power of getting it." 

But Socrates is not satisfied with this. You must, 
he says, get what is honourable with justice (or it 
would not be virtuous); and justice is a part of virtue. 

Meno is puzzled by this, and complains that Socrates 
is a wizard, and has bewitched him. His arguments 
are like the shock of the torpedo — they benumb and 
stupefy. But Socrates declares that he is just as much 
perplexed himself; he is ready, indeed, to search for 
the truth, but he knows no more what the truth is 
than Meno does, 



92 PLATO. 

" How then" (says Meno, acutely) " can you search 
for that of which you know nothing ; and how, even 
if you find it, can you be sure that you have got it ] " 

This difficulty Socrates explains by that famous 
doctrine of Eeminiscence, which is so important a 
principle in the Platonic philosophy. The soul (as 
the poets say) is immortal, and is continually dying 
and being born again — passing from one body to 
another. During these stages of existence, in Hades 
and in the upper world, it has seen and learnt all 
things, but has forgotten the greater part of its know- 
ledge. It is capable, however, of reviving by asso- 
ciation all that it has learnt — for all nature is akin, 
and all knowledge and learning is only reminiscence. 
Socrates then proves his theory by cross-examining a 
boy — one of Meno's slaves — who gives the successive 
stages of a problem in geometry; and this implies that 
the knowledge was already latent in his mind. 

Then Socrates goes on to show that knowledge is 
the distinctive element of virtue, without which all 
good gifts, such as health, or beauty, or strength, are 
unprofitable because not rightly used ; and if virtue 
be knowledge, it cannot come by nature, but must 
be taught. 

" But who are its teachers ? " he asks, appealing to 
one of the company, Anytus, afterwards his own 
accuser : for he has failed, hitherto, to find them. 
" Shall Meno go to the Sophists — the professed 
teachers of all Greece ?" 

" Heaven forbid ! " answers Anytus ; " the Sophists 
are the corrupters of our nation. The real teachers are 



JWTHYPHRO. 93 

the good old Athenian gentlemen, and the statesmen 
of a past age." 

But this Socrates will not allow. These great 
statesmen never imparted their own wisdom to their 
sons, and yet they surely would have done so had it 
been possible. 

Anytus is indignant that his heroes should be so 
lightly spoken of, and angrily bids Socrates be careful 
of his words, and remember that it is easier to do men 
harm in Athens than to do them good. 

Still the original question has not been answered, 
" Is Virtue teachable 1 " and Socrates inclines to think 
it " a gift from heaven," and that it may be directed 
by another faculty, practically as useful as knowledge, 
namely, " right opinion ; ; ' and this is a sort of divine 
instinct possessed by statesmen, but which they cannot 
impart to others. The higher form of virtue — the 
ideal knowlege — is possessed by none ; and if a man 
could be found both possessing it and able to impart' 
it, he would be like Tiresias, as Ulysses saw him in 
Hades, who alone had understanding in the midst of 
a world of shadows. 

EUTHYPHRO. 

This Dialogue carries us back to the days when the 
trial of Socrates was still impending. One morning 
the philosopher meets the augur Euthyphro at the 
entrance of the law-courts. 

" What are you doing here 1 " asks the augur. " I 
am defendant," Socrates answers, " in a suit which a 



94 PL A TO. 

young man named Meletus has brought against me on 
a charge of corrupting the youth ; — and you*? " 

" I am prosecuting my father for murder," is the 
startling reply of Euthyphro ; and then he proceeds 
to tell the story. A man employed on his father's 
estate, in the island of Naxos, had killed a fellow- 
slave in a drunken quarrel ; and his father had hound 
the offender hand and foot, and thrown him into a 
ditch, while he sent to inquire of a diviner at Athens 
what he should do with him. But long before the mes- 
senger could return, the unfortunate slave had died of 
cold and hunger ; and Euthyphro had felt it his duty 
to prosecute his father for murder. " My friends," 
says he, " call me impious and a madman for so doing; 
but I know better than they do in what true filial 
piety consists." 

" And what is Piety % " asks Socrates ; " the know- 
ledge may be of use to me in my approaching 
trial." 

" Doing as I am doing now," replies the other, in 
the true spirit of a Pharisee — " bringing a murderer to 
justice without respect of persons, and following the 
example set by the gods themselves." 

But (asks Socrates again) what is the specific 
character of piety ? — for there must be other pious 
acts besides prosecuting one's father, and the gods may 
disagree as to questions of right and wrong. Even. 
suppose they all agree in loving a certain act, the fact 
of their loving it would not make it pious. 

Then Euthyphro defines piety to be that branch 
of justice which chiefly concerns the gods; and that 



EUTUYPHRO. 95 

man, he says, is most pious who knows Lest how to 
propitiate their favour by prayer and sacrifice. Thus 
piety becomes a sort of business transaction, on the 
mutual benefit system, between gods and men ; where 
worldly prosperity is bestowed on one side, and honour 
and gratitude are rendered on the other. 

But Socrates is not satisfied. They have, he says, 
been arguing in a circle, and haye got back to the de- 
finition they before rejected — that piety is " what is 
dear to the gods : " for the honour we thus pay to 
them by prayer and sacrifice is most dear to them. So 
they must again seek fur the true answer ; and Euthy- 
phro must tell him, for if any man knows the nature 
of piety, it is evidently he. But Euthyphro is in a 
hurry, and cannot stay. 

" If Socrates had thought like Euthyphro, he might 
have died in his bed. ;> Such is the moral M. Cousin * 
draws from this Dialogue ; and undoubtedly the sub- 
sequent impeachment of the philosopher might be 
attributed in part to the enmity of the Athenian 
priesthood — always jealous and intolerant of any new 
form of faith. Here the contrast is (as Plato probably 
meant it to be) a striking one between the augur 
Euthyphro — perfect in the letter of the law, but 
whose consistent "piety" is impelling him to be a 
parricide— -and Socrates, even now about to be indicted 
for worshipping strange gods, yet proving a self-de- 
voted martyr who refuses to save his life by tamper- 
ing with his conscience, and who dies rather than 

* Fragm. de Philos. Ana, 117. 



96 PLATO. 

break the law by attempting to escape, when escape 
was easy. 

CRATYLUS. 

This Dialogue turns entirely upon etymology, and 
hence it is extremely difficult to reproduce it in a 
modern form, as continual reference is made to Greek 
nouns and names. The humour is so extravagant and 
sustained, and the derivations, which Socrates gravely 
propounds, are often so fanciful and far-fetched, that 
Mr Jowett thinks Plato intended the Cratylus as a 
satire upon the false and specious philology of the 
day ; but that the meaning of his satire (as is often 
the case) has " slept in the ear of posterity/' 

Cratylus, an admirer of Heraclitus, has been arguing 
about names with Hermogenes — a younger brother of 
the rich Callias, whom we have met before as the 
hospitable entertainer of Protagoras — and his brother 
Sophists. Hermogenes maintains that names are 
merely conventional signs, which can be given or taken 
away at pleasure ; and that any name which you 
choose to give anything is correct until you change it : 
while Cratylus holds that names are real and natural 
expressions of thought, or else they would be mere 
inarticulate sounds ; and that all truth comes from 
language. They invite Socrates, who has just .joined 
them, to give his opinion. " Alas ! " says Socrates, 
regretfully, " if I could only have afforded to attend 
that fifty-drachma course of lectures given by the great 
Prodicus, who advertised them as a complete education 
in grammar and language, I could have told you all 



CRATYLUS. 97 

about it; but I was only able to attend the single- 
drachma course, and know as little of this difficult 
question as you. Still, I should like a free discussion 
on the subject." 

We cannot (he goes on) accept Hennogenes' prin- 
ciple, that each man has a private right of nomencla- 
ture : for if anybody might name anything, and give 
it as many names as he liked, all meaning and distinc- 
tion of terms would soon perish — there being as much 
truth and falsehood implied in words as in sentences. J 
IS"o, — speaking and naming, like any other art, should 
be done in the right way, with the right instrument, and 
by the right man in the right place. " This giving of 
names," he continues, " is no such light^matter as you 
fancy, or the work of chance persons ; and Cratylus 
is right in saying that things have names by nature, 
and that not every man is an artificer of names, but 
he only who looks to the thing which each name by 
nature has, and is, will be able to express the ideal 
forms of things in letters and syllables." It is the 
law that gives names through the legislator, who is 
advised in his work by the Dialectician, who alone 
knows the right use of names, and who can ask and 
answer questions properly. 

The Sophists profess to teach you the correctness 
of names ; but if you think lightly of them, turn to 
the poets. In Homer you will find that the same 
thing is called differently by gods and men — for 
instance, the river which the gods call Xanthus, men 
call Scamander ; and there is a solemn and mysterious 
truth in this, for of course* the gods must be right. 

A. c. vol. xix. G 



98 PLATO. 

And so with the two names that Hector's son went 
by — As ty an ax and Scamandrius— which did Homei 
think correct ? Clearly, the name given by the men, 
who are always wiser than the women. This is another 
great truth ; and besides, in this case, there is a curious 
coincidence, for the names of the father and son — 
though having only one letter (t) the same — mean the 
same thing — Hector being " holder," and Astyanax 
" defender," of the city. The mere difference of sylla- 
bles matters nothing, if the same sense is retained.* 

All these old heroic names, continues Socrates, carry 
their history with them ; and, if you analyse them 
properly, you learn the character of the men or gods 
who bore them. Atreus is " the stubborn "or " de- 
structive ; " Orestes, the wild " mountain ranger ; " 
Zeus himself, the lord of " life " — and so on with the 
other personages in Hesiod's genealogy. 

Hermogenes is startled by these derivations, and 
thinks Socrates must be inspired — his language is so 
oracular. 

" Yes," says Socrates, " and I caught this inspira- 
tion from the great Euthyphro, with whom I have 
been since daybreak, listening while he declaimed ; 
his divine wisdom has so filled my ears and possessed 
my soul, that to-day I will give myself up to this mys- 
terious influence, and examine fully the history of 
names ; to-morrow I will go to some priest or sophist, 
and be purified of this strange bewitchment." 

Sometimes, he continues, we must change and shift 
the letters to get at the real form 01 the word : thus 

* So says Fhiellen ; they " are all one reckonings, save the 
phrase is a little variations." — Henry V., act iv. sc. 7. 



CRATYLUS. 99 

sdma, "body," is the same as sema, "tomb" — mean- 
ing the grave in which our soul is buried, or perhaps 
kept safe, as in a prison, till the last penalty is paid. 
So also Pluto is the same as Phdus, and means the 
giver of riches, for all wealth comes from the world 
below, where he is king. It is true that we use his 
name as a euphemism for Hades, but we do so wrongly, 
for there is really nothing terrible connected with that 
word. It does not mean the awful "unseen" world, 
as people think • but Pluto is called Hades because he 
knows (eidenai) all goodness and beauty, and thus 
binds all who come to him by the strongest chains 
— stronger than those of Father Time himself. And 
so these other awful names, such as Persephatta and 
Apollo, have really nothing terrible about them, if you 
examine their derivation. But Socrates will have no 
more discussion about the gods — he is " afraid of 
them." 

" Only one more, god," pleads Hermogenes. " I should 
like to know about Hermes, of whom I am said not to be 
a true son. Let us make him out, and then I shall know 
if there is anything in what Cratylus says." 

" # I should imagine," says Socrates, " that the name 
Hermes has to do with speech, and signifies that he is the 
interpreter, or. messenger, or thief, or liar, or bargainer ; — 
language has a great deal to say to all that sort of thing ; 
and, as I was telling you, the word eirein is expressive of 
the use of speech, and we have improved eiremes into 
Hermes." 

" Then I am very sure," says Hermogenes, in a tone of 
conviction, " that Cratylus was quite right in saying that I 
was no true son of Hermes, for I am not a good hand at 
speeches." — J. 



100' PLATO. 

Then Socrates examines the names of the various 
elements, virtues, and moral qualities, most of which 
he derives in a manner that would shock a modern 
philologist. Some of them, he says truly, have a 
foreign origin, inasmuch as the Greek "borrowed many 
words from the Barbarians ; " for the Barbarians are 
older than we are, and the original form of words may 
have been lost in the lapse of ages." The word 
dikalon — "justice " — says Socrates, has greatly puzzled 
him. Some one had told him, as a great mystery, 
that the word was the same as diaion — the subtle and 
penetrating power that enters into everything in crea- 
tion ; and when he inquired further, he was told that 
Justice was the Sun, — the piercing or burning element 
in nature. But when he quotes this beautiful notion 
with great glee to a friend, he is met by the satirical 
answer — " What ! is there then no justice in the world 
when the sun goes down*?" And when Socrates begs his 
friend to tell him his own honest o'pinion, he says, "Fire 
in the abstract ;" which is not very intelligible. Another 
says, " No, — not fire in the abstract, but the abstrac- 
tion of heat in fire." A third professes to laugh at 
this, and says, with Anaxagoras, that Justice is Mind; 
for Mind, they say, has absolute power, and mixes 
with nothing, and governs all things, and permeates 
all things. At last, he says, he found himself in 
greater perplexity as to the nature of Justice than 
when he began his inquiry. 

Then follow other derivations, more extravagant 
than any which we have noticed ; but Socrates con- 
cludes with a long passage of serious etymology. We 



THEJZTETUS. 101 

should get at primary names (he says), and separate 
the letters, which have all a distinct meaning — thus I 
expresses " smoothness," r " motion/' a " size," and e 
u length." When we have fixed their meaning, we 
can form them into syllables and words ; and add and 
subtract until we get a good and true image of the 
idea we intend to express. Of course there are degrees 
of accuracy in this process, where nature is helped out 
by custom ; and a name, like a picture, may be a more 
or less perfect likeness of a person or thought. Great 
truths may be learned through names ; but there are 
higher forms of knowledge, which can only be learnt 
from the ideas themselves, of which our words are but 
faint impressions ; and " no man of sense will put 
himself or his education in the power of names,'' or 
believe that the world is in a perpetual flux and tran- 
sition, "like a leaky vessel." And with this parting 
blow at Heraclitus, tjie Dialogue, with its mixture of 
truth and fiction, of jest and earnest, comes to an end. 
But, wild and fanciful as many of the derivations un- 
doubtedly are, it must still be admitted that " the 
guesses of Plato are better than all the other theories 
of the ancients respecting language put together."* 

THE.ETETUS. 

Euclid (not the mathematician, but the philosopher 
of that name) meets his friend Terpsion at the door of 
his own house in Megara ; and their conversation hap- 
pens to turn upon Theaetetus, whom Euclid has just 
seen carried up towards Athens, almost dead of dysen- 
* Jowett's Plato, i. 620 



102 PL A TO. 

tery, and of the wounds he had received in the battle 
of Corinth. " What a gallant fellow he was, and what 
a loris he will be ! " says Terpsion ; and then Euclid 
remembers how Socrates had prophesied great things 
of him in his youth, and had proved — as he always 
did — a true prophet ; for Thea3tetus had more than ful- 
filled the promise of his early years. Euclid had 
taken careful notes of a discussion between Socrates 
and the young Theaetetus in days gone by, and this 
paper is now read by a servant for the benefit of 
Terpsion. 

As Socrates said, Thea?tetus was " a reflection of his 
own ugly self," both in person and character. Snub- 
nosed, and with projecting eyes, brave and patient, 
slow and sure in the pursuit of knowledge, " full of 
gentlenes*, and always making progress, like a noiseless 
river of oil." His answers in the Dialogue bear out 
this character : they are invariably shrewd and to the 
point, and would have done credit (says his examiner) 
to "many bearded men." Socrates is still the same 
earnest disputant, professing to know nothing himself, 
but willing to assist others in bringing their thoughts 
to the birth ; for so far, he tells Thesetetus, he has in- 
herited the art of his mother Phsenarete, the midwife. 
Hence those youths resort to him who are tortured by 
the pangs of perplexity and doubt, and yearn to be 
delivered of the conceptions which are struggling for 
release within their breasts. If these children of their 
souls are likely to prove a true and noble offspring, 
they are suffered to see the light ; but if, as is often 
the case, his divine inward monitor warns Socrates 



thejETetus. 103 

that they are but lies or shadows of the truth, they are 
stifled in the birth. 

The question discussed is Knowledge ; and the first 
definition of it proposed is " sensible perception.' 7 This 
Socrates connects with the old saying of Protagoras, 
" Man is the measure of all things ; " and this he again 
links on to the still older doctrine of Heraclitus, " All 
things are becoming.'' "These ancient philosophers" 
(he says) — "the great Parmenides excepted — agreed 
that since we live in the midst of perpetual change 
and transition, our knowledge of all things must be 
relative. There is no such tiling, they will tell you, 
as real existence. You should not say, 'this is 
white or black,' but, 'it is my (or your) impres- 
sion that it is so.' And thus each man can only 
know what he perceives ; and so far his judgment 
is true." 

" Of course " (continues Socrates), " we might object 
that our senses may deceive us ; that in cases where a 
man is mad or dreaming — who knows, indeed, whether 
we are not dreaming at this very moment ? — he must 
get false impressions : or, again, that our tastes may 
become perverted ; and as wine is distasteful to a sick 
man, so what is really good or true does not appear so 
to us. But Protagoras would reply that the sick man's 
dreams are real to him, — that my impressions of wine 
are certainly different in health and sickness ; but then 
/ am different, and my impressions in either case are 
true." 

" I wonder (says Socrates, ironically) that Protagoras did 
not begin his <*reat work on Truth with a declaration that a 



104 PL A TO. 

pig or a dog-faced baboon, or some other strange monster 
which has sensation, is the measure of all things ; then, 
when we were reverencing him as a god, he might have 
condescended to inform us that he was no wiser than a tad- 
pole, and did not even aspire to be a man — would not this 
have produced an overpowering effect 1 For if truth is 
only sensation, and one man's discernment is as good as 
another's, and no man has any superior right to determine 
whether the opinion of any other is true or false, but each 
man, as we have several times repeated, is to himself the 
sole judge, and everything that he judges is true and right, 
why should Protagoras be preferred to the place of wisdom 
and. instruction, and deserve to be well paid, and we poor 
ignoramuses have to go to him, if each one is the measure 
of his own wisdom ? " — J. i - ,' ur** ?*■* 

Then Socrates takes upon himself to defend Pro- 
tagoras, who is made to qualify his original statement : 
"Man is the measure of all things, but one man's 
knowledge may be superior in proportion as his im- 
pressions are better ; still, every impression is true and 
real, and a false opinion is impossible." 

Common - sense, replies Socrates, is against this 
theory, which would reduce all minds to the same 
level. Practically, men are always passing judgment 
on the impressions of others, pronouncing them to be 
true or false, and acting accordingly ; they recognise 
superior minds, and submit to teachers and rulers : 
thus Protagoras himself made a large fortune on the 
reputation of having better judgment than his neigh- 
bours. And if one man's judgment is as good as 
another's, who is to decide? Is the question to be 
settled by a plurality of votes, or what shall be the 
last court of appeal? Protagoras may think this or 



THEuElETUS. 105 

that, but there are probably ten thousand who will 
think the opposite ; and, by his own rule, their' judg- 
ments are as good as his. 

But even Socrates feels some compunction in thus 
attacking the theories of a dead philosopher who can- 
not defend himself. 

" If he could only " (he says) " get his head out of the 
world below, he would give both of us a sound drubbing 
— me for quibbling, and you for accepting my quibbles — 
and be off and underground again in a twinkling/' — J. 

Then comes a break in the main argument, and 
Socrates wanders off into a digression, in which he 
draws a striking contrast between the characters of 
the lawyer and philosopher — the former always in a 
hurry, with the water-clock urging him on — busy and 
preoccupied, the slave of his clients, — keen and shrewd, 
but narrow-minded, and from his early years versed 
in the crooked paths of deceit : while the philoso- 
pher is a gentleman at large, master of his own time, 
abstracted and absorbed in thought, seeing nothing at 
his feet, and knowing nothing of the scandals of the 
clubs or the gossip of the town — hardly even ac- 
quainted with his next-door neighbour by sight — shy, 
awkward, and too simple-minded to retaliate an insult, 
or understand the merits of a long pedigree.* 

* The Philosopher here argues that a long line of ancestors 
does not necessarily make a gentleman ; for any one, if he 
chooses, may reckon back to the first Parent, — just as Tennyson 
reminds Lady Clara that — 

tc The grand old Gardener and his wife 
Smile at the claims of long descent." 



106 PLATO, 

"Knowledge, then," continues Socrates, resuming 
the argument, " cannot be perception ; for, after all, 
it is the soul which perceives, and the senses are 
merely organs of the body springing from a common 
centre of life. In fact, we see and hear rather through 
them than with them. Furthermore, there are certain 
abstractions w^hich we (that is, the trained and intel- 
ligent few) perceive with the eye of reason alone." 

Then Theastetus suggests that knowledge may be de- 
fined as " true opinion ;" but then, says Socrates, the old 
objection would be raised, that false opinion is impos- 
sible ; for we must either know or not know, and in 
either case we know what we know. The reply is, that 
mistakes are always possible ; you may think one thing 
to be another. Our souls, continues Socrates, using a 
metaphor which has since passed into a commonplace, 
are like waxen tablets — some broad and deep, where 
the impressions made by sight or hearing are clear and 
indelible ; others cramped and narrow, where the im- 
pressions from the senses are confused and crowded 
together; and sometimes the wax itself is soft, or 
shallow, or impure, and so the impression is soon 
effaced. Often, too, we put, so to speak, the shoe on 
the wrong foot, or stamp with the wrong seal; and 
ftom these wrong and hasty impressions come false 
opinions. There can be no mistake when perception 
and knowledge correspond ; but we often have one 
without the other. I may see an inscription, but not 
know its meaning ; or I may hear a foreigner talk, but 
not understand a word he says. 

But stay, says Socrates — we have been rashly using 



THEMTETUS. 107 

these words " know " and " understand," while all the 
time we are ignorant of what " knowledge " is. "We 
must try again to define the term ; and first, to have 
is quite different from to possess knowledge. Our soul 
is like an aviary full of wild birds, flying all about the 
place, singly or in groups. You may possess them, 
but you have none in hand ; and until you collect, 
comprehend, and grasp your winged thoughts, you 
cannot be said to have them either. When you have 
once caught your bird (or your thought), you cannot 
mistake it ; but while they are flying about, you may 
mistake the ring-dove for the pigeon, and so you may 
mistake the various numbers and forms of knowledge. 

" Perhaps," says Theastetus, sharply, " there may be 
sham birds in the aviary ; and you may put forth your 
hand intending to grasp Knowledge, but catch Ignor- 
ance instead. How then % " 

" No," says Socrates • " it is a clever suggestion, 
but if you once know the form of knowledge, you will 
never mistake it for ignorance. Perhaps, however, 
there may be higher forms of knowledge in other 
aviaries, which help you to tell the wrong from the 
right thought ; but on this supposition we might go 
on imagining forms to infinity.' ' 

A third and last definition of knowledge is now pro- 
posed — "True opinion plus definition or explanation." 
But what is explanation 1 ? — is it the expression of a 
man's thoughts % But every one who is not deaf and 
dumb can express his thoughts. Or is it the enumera- 
tion of the elements of which anything is composed 1 
But you may know the syllables of a name without 



108 PL A TO. 

being able to explain the letters. Or, lastly, is expla- 
nation " the perception of difference " ] For instance 
(says Socrates, somewhat rndely), I know and recog- 
nise Theaetetus by his having a peculiar snub nose, 
different from mine and all other snub noses in the 
world. But is my perception of this difference 
opinion or knowledge'? If the first, I have only 
opinion ; if the second, I am assuming the very term 
which we are trying to define. 

And thus, in the true " Socratic manner," abrupt 
and unsatisfactory as it seems to us, the Dialogue ends ; 
and " knowledge " remains the same unknown quantity 
as before. And yet (Socrates thinks) the discussion 
has not been altogether fruitless ; for he has shown 
Theaetetus that the offspring of his brain were not 
worth the bringing up. 

" If," concludes the philosopher, " you are likely to have 
any more embryo thoughts, such offspring will be all the 
better for our present investigation ; and if you should 
prove barren, you will be less overbearing and gentler to 
your friends, and modest enough not to fancy you know 
what you do not know. So far only can my art go, and 
no further ; for I know none of the secrets of youi famous 
teachers, past or present." — J. 



CHAPTEE V. 

plato's ideal states. 



"II faufc bien reflechir sur la Politique d'Anstote et sur les deux Be- 
publiques de Platon, si Von veut avoir une juste idee des lois et des mceurs 
des anciens Grecs." — Montesquieu. 



THE REPUBLIC. 

In this, the grandest and most complete of all his 
works, Plato blends all the stores of past thought on 
religion, politics, and art, into one great constructive 
effort ; systematising, and, as far as might be, reconcil- 
ing the conflicting theories and the various systems 
which had preceded him. Thus he first passes in 
review the prudential morality of an earlier age, built 
on texts from the poets and on aphorisms which had 
come down from the seven sages ; he then puts to the 
proof the rash self-assertion of the Sophists, and the 
ingenious scepticism of the rising generation. But both 
these stages of thought, when tried, are found wanting, 
and the object of his search seems as far off as ever ; 
for perfect justice and wisdom (so Plato thinks) can- 
not be found in any kingdom of this world. The 
result is that he frames a State of his own, ideal in one 



110 PLATO. 

sense, but purely Greek in another, "which was to com- 
bine the iron discipline of Sparta with the many-sided 
culture of Athens — a city where, as her own historian 
said, men might unite elegance with simplicity, and 
might be learned without being effeminate.* And 
then, like some painter who copies a divine original, 
to use his own comparison ,t Plato first cleanses the 
moral canvas of his visionary state, then sketches the 
outline of the constitution, fills it in with the ideal 
forms of virtue, and gives it a human complexion in 
the godlike colouring of Homer ; and the result is a 
glorious picture, as the world would acknowledge, he 
thinks, if they could be brought to see the truth ; and 
a picture which might be realised in history, could a 
single king, or son of a king, become a philosopher. 

Ethics and politics w T ere so closely blended in 
Plato's view, that he regards the virtues cf the Man 
as identical with those of the State, and thus exagger- 
ates, says Mr Grote, " the unity of the one and the 
partibility of the other." But we must remember that 
as the ancient state was smaller, so the public spirit 
pervading it was more intense ; each man was, as we 
might say, citizen, soldier, and member of Parliament ; 
and unlike modern society, which has been defined as 
u anarchy plus the policeman," — where tolerance is car- 
ried to its furthest limits, and where state interference 
is restricted to the security of life and property, — 
the Greek theory was to secure as far as possible an 
absolute uniformity of sentiment and character, and 

* Thucyd., ii. 40. + Bep., vi. 501. 



THE REPUBLIC 111 

to crush anything like heresy or dissent among the 
members of the social body. The state, if it existed 
at all, must be at one with itself; and they would 
point to Sparta as a triumphant proof that a rational 
character might be created by the all-powerful hand of 
a legislator like Lycurgus. Pericles indeed might 
boast that at Athens there were no sour looks at a 
neighbour's eccentricities, and that it was emphatically 
" A land, where, girt by friends and foes, 
A man might say the thing he would : " 

but, as we have seen in the case of Socrates, Athenian 
tolerance might be tried too far, and theories which 
tended in their view to outrage religion and morality, 
could not be endured with the same equanimity as in 
our sceptical and so-called enlightened age. 

The opening scene in the "Republic" is such an ex- 
cellent specimen of Plato's powers of description, that 
it is well worth giving in full. It is Socrates who 
speaks : — 

I went down yesterday to the Piraeus with Glaucon the 
son of Ariston, to offer up prayer to the goddess, and 
also from a wish to see how the festival, then to be held 
for the first time, would be celebrated. I was very much 
pleased with the native Athenian procession, though that 
of the Thracians appeared to be no less brilliant. We had 
finished our prayers, and satisfied onr curiosity, and were 
returning to the city, when Polernarchus, the son of Cepha- 
lus, caught sight of us at a distance as we were on our way 
towards home, and told his servant to run and bid us wait 
for him. The servant came behind me, took hold of my 
cloak, and said, " Polernarchus bids you wait." I turned 
round, and asked him where his master was. " There he 
is," he replied, " coming on behind : pray wait for him." 



112 PLATO. 

"We will wait," answered Glaucon. Soon afterwards 
Polemarchus came up, with. Adeimantus the brother of 
Glaucon, and Niceratus the son of Nicias, and a few other 
persons, apparently coming away from the procession. 
Polemarchus instantly began : " Socrates, if I am not de- 
ceived, you are taking your departure for the city." 

"You are not wrong in your conjecture," I replied. 

" Well, do you see what a large body we are ? " 

" Certainly I do." 

" Then either prove yourselves the stronger party, or 
else stay where you are." 

" No," I replied ;. "there is still an alternative : suppose 
we persuade you that you ought to let us go." 

" Could you possibly persuade us, if we refused to 
listen 1 " 

" Certainly not," replied Glaucon. 

" Make up your minds, then, that we sliall refuse to 
listen." 

Here Adeimantus interposed, and said : " Are you not 
aware that towards evening there will be a torch-race on 
horseback in honour of the goddess 1 " 

" On horseback ! " I exclaimed ; " that is a novelty. Will 
they carry torches, and pass them on to one another, while 
the horses are racing ? or how do you mean ] " 

" As you say," replied Polemarchus ; " besides, there will 
be a night festival, which it will be worth while to look at. 
We will rise after dinner, and go out to see this festival ; 
and there we shall meet with many of our young men, 
with whom we can converse. Therefore stay, and do not 
refuse us." — D. 

And so tbey are persuaded to return with Polemar- 
clius to bis home, where tbey find his father, the aged 
Cephalus, surrounded by his sons and friends. 

" You should come to see me oftener," says Cephalus 
to Socrates, "now that I cannot come to you. I find 



TEE REPUBLIC. 113 

that the older one grows, the fonder one becomes of 
conversation.'' 

"And what think you of old age itself?" asks 
Socrates. " Is the road to the grave rough or smooth % " 

" Smooth and peaceful enough," answers Cephalus 
— " that is, to one of easy temper like myself; though 
some old men, I know, complain bitterly of the mis- 
eries of age, and mourn over the faded pleasures of 
their youth." 

" Yes," says Socrates ; " but the world would say 
that your riches make old age an easy burden." 

" There is something in that ; but I should say 
myself that a good man could not be happy in poverty 
and old age, nor again would all the wealth of Croesus 
make a bad man happy." 

" What do you think, then, to be the chief advan- 
tage of riches 1 " asks Socrates. 

" If I mention it/' he replied, " I shall perhaps get few 
persons to agree with me. Be assured, Socrates, that when 
a man is nearly persuaded that he is going to die, he feels 
alarmed and concerned about things which never affected 
him before. Till then, he has laughed at those stories about 
the departed, which tell us that he who has clone wrong 
here must suffer for it in the other world ; but now his 
mind is tormented with a fear that these stories may possi- 
bly be true. And either owing to the infirmity of old age, 
or because he is now nearer to the confines of the future 
state, he has a clearer insight into those mysteries. How- 
ever that may be, he becomes full of misgiving and appre- 
hension, and sets himself to the task of calculating and reflect- 
ing whether he has done any wrong to any one. Hereupon, 
if he finds his life full of unjust deeds, he is apt to start out 
of sleep in terror, as children do, and he lives haunted by 

a. c. vol. xix. H 



114 PLATO. 

gloomy anticipations. But if his conscience reproaches 
him with no injustice, he enjoys the abiding presence of 
sweet Hope, that ' kind nurse of old age,' as Pindar calls 
it. . . . And it is this consideration, as I hold, that makes 
riches chiefly valuable, I do not say to everybody, but at 
any rate to the good. For they contribute greatly to our 
preservation from even unintentional deceit or falsehood, 
and from that alarm which would attend our departure to 
the other world, if we owed any sacrifices to a god, or any 
money to a man. They have also many other uses. But 
after weighing them all separately, Socrates, I am inclined 
to consider this service as anything but the least important 
which riches can render to a wise and sensible man/' — D. 

" So, then, this is the meaning of Justice," says 
Socrates, seizing on the word Injustice — " to tell the 
truth and pay your debts % " 

" Certainly, if we are to believe the poet Simon- 
ides," says Polemarchus (for Cephalus gives up the 
discussion, and quits the company) ; " his words are — 
to pay back what you owe to each is just." 

" But you surely would never give back to a mad 
friend a sword which he had lent you 1 " 

" Ho," says Polemarchus ; " for Simonides says again, 
you should give back what is proper to each man — 
that is, good to your friends and evil to your foes ; 
and if you ask how, by making alliance with one and 
going to war with the other : and in peace, Justice is of 
use in ordinary dealings between man and man — espe- 
cially when you wish your money to be safely kept." 

" That is," says Socrates, " w T hen your money is idle 
and useless — then only Justice is useful ! Again, since 
the doctor can poison as well as heal ; and the general 



THE REPUBLIC. 115 

can overreacli the enemy as well as protect himself, 
Justice, if it can guard, must also steal; and the just 
man is a sort of thief, like Homer's Autolycus — 

" Who "best could steal, and swear he never stole." * 

Your poets have brought Justice to a pretty pass ! 
And may not men make mistakes, and injure their real 
friends 1 " 

" Yes," says Polemarchus ; " but by a friend I mean 
one who both seems and really is one ; and it is just 
to injure one's enemy if he is bad, and to help one's 
friend if he is good." 

" But hurting a man is the same as making him 
worse with respect to virtue, and such moral injury 
belongs not to good, but to its contrary, evil ; just as 
it is not heat that chills, but its contrary, cold. So it 
can never be just to injure either friend or foe; and this 
definition must have been invented not by Simonides 
but by Periander, or some other potentate, who thought 
his power irresistible." 

Then Thrasymachus, who had been growing more 
and more impatient, takes advantage of a pause, and, 
" like a wild beast gathering itself up for a spring," 
bursts in upon the argument. 

" No more of this foolish complaisance, Socrates ; 
answer yourself, instead of asking what justice is ; and 
don't tell me that it is ' the due,' or ' the profitable,' 
or ' the expedient,' or ' the lucrative,' or any nonsense 
of that sort. And let us have none of your usua] 
affectation of ignorance, if you please." 

* Horn. Odyss., xix. 395. 



116 PLATO. 

Socrates, who at first assumes to have been terror- 
struck at this sudden attack, tries to soothe Thrasy- 
machus. " A clever man like you," he says, " should 
pity us in our perplexity, instead of treating us harshly ; 
we are searching for what is more precious than any 
gold, and want all the assistance we can get." 

Thrasymachus is somewhat pacified by this flattery, 
and gives his own theory, which is substantially the 
same as that we have already seen advocated by Cal- 
licles in the "Gorgias," — that Justice is "the Interest 
of the Stronger." Rulers always legislate with a view 
to their own interests ; and as a shepherd fattens his 
sheep for his own advantage, so do the " shepherds of 
the people" regard their subjects as mere sheep, and 
look only to the possible profit they may get from them. 
Justice is thus the gain of the strong and the loss of 
the weak ; for the just man's honesty is ruinous to 
himself, while the unjust man, especially if he can 
plunder wholesale like the tyrant, is happy and pros- 
perous, and well spoken of; and thus Injustice itself is 
a stronger and lordlier thing than Justice. 

To this barefaced sophistry Socrates replies that the 
unjust man may go too far ; in overreaching his neigh- 
bours — just and unjust alike — he breaks all the rules 
of art, and proves himself an unskilful and ignorant 
workman, who has no fixed standard in life to act by. 
And in an unjust state, where every man is thus trying 
to get the better of his neighbour, there will be endless 
discord and divisions, making all united action impos- 
sible ; it will be like a house divided against itself. 
And as it is with the unjust state, so will it be with 



THE REPUBLIC. 117 

the unjust man. He will be ever at war with, him- 
self, and so unable to act decisively. Lastly, the soul 
(like the ear or eye) has a work of its own to do, 
and a virtue which enables it to do that work well. 
Justice is a work of the soul, and the just man lives 
well and is happy ; and as happiness is more profit- 
able than misery, so is Justice more profitable than 
Injustice. 

Thrasymachus is now in a good temper again, and 
readily acquiesces in all that Socrates has said ; but 
Glaucon, shrewd and combative, takes upon himself 
the office of " devil's advocate " (for he admits that his 
own convictions are the other way), and revives the 
defence of Injustice from a Sophist's point of view. 

" Naturally, " he says, " to do injustice is a good, 
and to suffer it an evil : but as men found that the 
evil was greater than the good, they made a compact 
of mutual abstinence, and so justice is simply a useful 
compromise under certain circumstances. If you were 
to furnish the just and unjust man each with a ring 
such as Gyges wore of old, making the wearer invisible 
to all eyes, you would find them both following the 
same lawless path ; for no man would be so steeled 
against temptation as to remain virtuous, if he were in- 
visible. As things are, he finds honesty the best policy. 

" Again, let us assume both characters — the just and 
unjust — to be perfect in their parts, so that we may 
decide which is the happier of the two. Our ideal 
villain will reduce crime to a science — he will have 
wealth, and money, and honour, and influence — all 
that this world esteems precious ; he will have a high 



118 PLATO. 

reputation for justice (for this is the crowning exploit 
of injustice) ; he will accomplish all his ends by force 
or fraud, and the godr, whose favour he will win by 
costly offerings, will sanctify the means. While the 
perfectly simple and noble man, clothed only in his 
justice, will surfer the worst consequences of a lifelong 
reputation for seeming to be that which he really is 
not — unjust. He will be put in chains, scourged, 
tortured, and at last put to death. Which think you 
the happier of these two *? " 

Then Adeimantus takes up the parable, — for brother, 
he says, should help brother. " Men too commonly 
make the mistake of dwelling, not upon the beauty of 
Justice in itself, but on the worldly advantages, the 
honours, and the high reputation which attend a just 
life. It is in this spirit that parents advise their chil- 
dren, and that Homer and Hesiod recount the blessings 
which the gods bestow upon the pious — 

" ' Like to a blameless king, who, godlike in virtue and 

wisdom, 
Justice ever maintains ; whose rich land fruitfully yields 

him 
Harvests of barley and wheat ; and his orchards are heavy 

with fruitage. 
Strong are the young of his flocks, and tho sea gives him 

fish in abundance.' * 

And other poets describe the glories of a sensual para- 
dise, where their heroes feast on couches, crowned with 
flowers, and make the fairest reward of virtue to be 

* Horn. Odyss., xix. 109 (Davies and Vaughan). 



THE REPUBLIC. 119 

' immortal drunkenness ; ' while they doom the unjust 
to fill sieves and languish in a swamp through all 
eternity. 

" Others, again, strike out a different line, and will 
tell you how narrow and difficult is the way of virtue, 
and how broad and pleasant is the path of vice ; 
and they affirm, too, that the gods bestow prosperity 
on the wicked and adversity on the good. And lastly, 
there is a doctrine of indulgences preached by mendi- 
cant prophets, who profess to have power to absolve 
the rich man from his sins, in this world and the next, 
by spells and mystic rites ; and they quote the poets 
to prove that vice and atonement are equally easy. 

" What is a young man to do amidst all this conflict- 
ing advice % Shall he make Justice ' his strong tower 
of defence/ as Pindar says ; or shall he fence his charac- 
ter with the appearance of virtue, and so by fair means 
or foul obtain that happiness which is the end of life i 
The gods — if at least there are gods, and if they care 
for men's affairs — can easily be wrought upon by 
prayer and sacrifice ; and we need have no fear of 
Hades so long as we perform the mystic rites. And 
so, if he combines injustice with the semblance of 
justice, he will reap all the advantages of both, and 
will fare well in both worlds. 

" The blame of all this evil rests with our poets and 
teachers, who have always dwelt on the glories and 
rewards following on a just life, but have never ade- 
quately discussed what Justice and Injustice really are. 
Could we see them as they are, we should choose the 
one as the greatest good, and shun the other as the 



120 PLATO. 

greatest evil. It rests with Socrates," concludes Ade- 
imantus, "to show how Justice is itself a blessing, 
and Injustice a curse, to the possessor ; and to leave 
to others the task of describing the reputation and 
rewards which indirectly follow from either." 

Socrates agrees to this ; but he pleads that, as he 
has weak eyes, he must be allowed to read the larger 
writing first — that is, to look for Justice in the 
State, which is, after all, only the individual "writ 
large. " 

" The State springs," he says, " from the mutual 
needs of men, whose simplest outfit will require 
food, shelter, and clothing, so that the least possible 
city must consist of four or five men ; and as they 
will have different natures, and one man can do one 
thing better than many, there will be a natural divi- 
sion of labour. Soon, however, fresh wants will arise. 
Smiths, carpenters, and shepherds will be found neces- 
sary, and thus a population will soon spring up. Then 
comes the necessity of importing and exporting, and 
this will produce merchants and sailors ; and by 
degrees the exchange of productions will give rise to a 
market and a currency. Life in such a city will be 
simple and frugal. Men will build, and plant, and till 
the soil. Their food will be coarse but wholesome ; 
and on holidays, 

" spreading these excellent cakes and loaves upon mats of 
straw or on clean leaves, and themselves reclining on rude 
beds of yew or myrtle boughs, they will make merry, 
themselves and their children, drinking their wine, wearing 
garlands, and singing the praises of the gods, enjoying one 



THE REPUBLIC. 121 

another's society, and not begetting children beyond their 
means, through a prudent fear of poverty or war/' — D. 

Glaucon objects that if Socrates had been founding 
" a city of pigs," he could hardly have given them less; 
and suggests that he should add the refinements of 
modern life. 

I see, continues Socrates, that we shall have to 
enlarge and decorate our State with the fine arts, and 
all the " fair humanities " of life ; gold and ivory, 
paintings and embroidery will be found there ; and a 
host of ornamental trades will soon spring up — danc- 
ers, cooks, barbers, musicians, and confectioners. So 
largely, in fact, will our population then increase, that 
the land will not be able to support it. Hence fresh 
territory must be acquired, and we must go to war to 
get it. We shall thus want a camp and a standing 
army. 

Now the art of war, more than any other, must be 
a separate craft ; and the soldier's profession requires 
not only a natural aptitude, but the study of a life- 
time. How shall we choose those who are to be 
our Guardians'? Clearly, they should have all the 
qualities of well-bred dogs — quick to see, swift to 
follow, and strong to fight — brave and spirited, gentle 
to friends, but fierce against their foes. Their natures 
must be harmonised by philosophy ; and philosophy 
involves education. 

In our education we will follow the old routine : 
first, Music — that is, all training by words and sounds. 
But we will have a strict censorship of the preas, and 



122 PLATO. 

banish from our State all those lying fables of our 
mythology, as well as the terrific descriptions of the 
lower world. We will lay down, instead, types to 
which all tales told to children must conform. Our 
music, too, shall be simple and spirited strains after 
the " Dorian mood ; " and in sculpture and in art we 
will encourage the same pure taste. Thus, with fair 
and gracef ul forms everywhere around them, our youth 
will drink into their souls, "like gales blowing from 
healthy lands/' all inspirations of truth and beauty. 

In their bodily training, we will encourage a plain 
and healthy diet, and there shall be no sauces or made 
dishes. Thus we shall want few lawyers and few phy- 
sicians : no sleepy j udges, or doctors whose skill only 
teaches them how to prolong worthless lives. Our 
citizens will have no time to be invalids ; with us it 
must be either iC kill or cure," and the evil body must 
be left to die, and the evil soul must be put to death. 

Our Eulers must be chosen from our Guardians — 
the best and oldest of the number ; and they must be 
tested — as gold is tried in the furnace — by pleasure 
and fear ; and if they come forth unstained and un- 
scathed from this trial, they shall be honoured both in 
life and death. And in order that we may secure a 
proper esprit de corps among them, we will invent and 
impress upon them a " noble falsehood." " Ye are 
children of earth (we will tell them), all brethren from 
the same great mother, whom you are in duty bound 
to protect. Your creator mingled gold in the nature 
of your chiefs ; silver in that of the soldiers ; bronze 
and iron went to form the artisans and labourers. It 



THE REPUBLIC. 123 

is your business, Guardians, to keep intact this purity 
of breed. ~No child of gold must remain among the 
artisans ; no child of iron among the rulers : for the 
State shall surely perish (so saith an oracle) when 
ruled by brass or iron." And this story must be 
handed down from father to son. as a sacred form of 
faith in our State. 

Now our Guardians must have neither houses, nor 
lands, nor dwellings, nor storehouses of their own ; 
but only fixed pay, and a soldier's lodging, and a com- 
mon mess-table. 

Adeimantus objects that the life of the Guardians can 
scarcely be happy on these terms — with no money to 
spend on themselves or their friends, kept on " board- 
wages," and always on duty. 

It is not our business (answers Socrates) to insure 
the happiness of a class. But our Guardians will be 
happy — that is, if they do their duty, preserve the 
unity of the State, maintain the golden mean between 
wealth and poverty, and be ever on the watch against 
the spirit of innovation — dangerous even in music, 
doubly so in education — and leave the highest and 
most sacred legislation to our ancestral god of Delphi. 

But (he interrupts himself suddenly) we are forget- 
ting Justice all this time. We must light a candle and 
search our city diligently, now that we have founded 
one, till we find it. Clearly our State, if it be perfect, 
will contain the four cardinal virtues ; and, if we can 
first discover three out of the four, the unknown re- 
mainder must be Justice. 

Wisdom will be the science of protection, possessed 



124 PLATO. 

by our Guardians ; and true Courage will be engrained 
in the hearts of our soldiers by law and education ; 
and Temperance will be that social harmony pervading 
the State, and making all the citizens to be of one 
mind, like strings attempered to one scale. But where 
is Justice ? Here at our feet, after all, for it can be 
nothing else than our original principle of division of 
labour : l t for a man is just when he does his own busi- 
ness, and does not meddle with his neighbour's, j 

And, returning to Man, we shall also find three parts 
in his soul corresponding to the three classes in our 
State. Eeason, which should rule ; Desire, which 
should obey ; and Passion,* which is properly the ally 
of reason, and is restrained by it as a dog is restrained 
by a shepherd. We shall also find the same cardinal 
virtues in the man as in the State. 

The just man will live uprightly, and will reduce all 
the elements of his soul to unison and harmony ; and 
as to the original question " whether injustice, if un- 
detected, pays in this life ? " we may answer that it is 
a moral disease — and that, as in the body, so in the 
soul, if the constitution is ruined, life will not be worth 
having. 



Then Socrates lays down the details of the system 
of Communism which he proposes to carry out in his 
State. " Following further our comparison of sheep- 

* There is no English equivalent for the Greek word thumos 

which combines the several meanings which we express in 

the words spirit, passion, honour, anger, all in one. 



THE REPUBLIC 125 

dogs, men and women are to have the same employ- 
ment (for there is no real difference between the sexes), 
and will go out to war together. Marriages must be 
strictly regulated ; and, as in the case of dogs or game- 
fowl, we must keep up the purity of breed. The best 
must marry the best, and the worst the worst • and 
the children of the former must be carefully reared, 
while any offspring from the latter must be exposed. 
There must be a public nursery, and no mother must 
know her own child. Thus, where all have common sym- 
pathies and interests, and there are no jealousies arising 
from separate families or properties, the State will be 
most thoroughly at unity with itself. 

" These children of the State shall be present in 
the battle-field — but at safe distance — to stimulate the 
courage of our warriors, and accustom our young to the 
scene of their future duties. And in war, the runaway 
and coward shall be degraded : but the brave shall be 
crowned and shall wed the fair ; he shall be honoured 
at the sacrifice and banquet, and if he falls, we shall 
proclaim that he sprang from the race of gold, and now 
haunts the earth in the form of a holy and powerful 
spirit. 

"War between Greek and Greek is an unnatural 
feud, and therefore we will not despoil the budies of 
the dead — for there is a meanness in injuring a body 
whence the soul has fled ; nor will we enslave a free 
Greek, nor lay waste Greek land, or burn houses, as 
heretofore/' 

Glaucon is willing to admit that this ideal State will 
have a thousand advantages over any at present, in 



126 PLATO. 

existence, if only it could be realised. How is this to 
be brought about ? 

Our State might be realised, Socrates replies, on one 
condition — preposterous as it will seem to the world — 
" philosophers must be kings;" or, failing this, the 
princes of this world must be imbued with the true 
philosophic spirit. 

And what, then, is a philosopher *? He is a rare and 
perfect being, who takes all knowledge and virtue as 
his portion ; he is " the spectator of all time and all 
existence," for he knows the absolute and real ideas of 
beauty, truth, and justice — far removed from the uncer- 
tain twilight of opinion. He 'is free from the mean- 
ness or injustice of petty natures ; he is lordly in his 
conceptions, gracious in manner, with a quick mem- 
ory, and a well-adjusted mind. It is no argument, 
continues Socrates, to say that among the so-called 
philosophers of the present day you will find many 
rogues and fools. It is so ; but the fault rests not with 
philosophy itself, but with the ignorant multitude, and 
with the pretentious teachers of our youth ; for rare 
talents may be perverted by bad training, and strong 
but ill-regulated minds will produce the greatest evils. 
A young and noble character has indeed little chance 
of withstanding the corruptions of the age. The ful- 
some compliments of friends and advisers, the sense- 
less clamour of the law-court or the Assembly, combine 
to ruin him ; and, worse than all, the influence of the 
Sophists, who act as keepers to this many-headed monster 
of a people, understanding its habits and humouring 
its caprices, calling what it fancies good and what it 



THE REPUBLIC. 127 

dislikes evil. And thus Philosophy herself is left deso- 
late, .and a crowd of vulgar interlopers leave their 
proper trades and rush in like escaped prisoners into a 
sanctuary, and profane the Temple of Truth. There 
can be but one result to such a debasing alliance as 
this — a host of spurious sophisms. Few and rare indeed 
are the cases where men of nobler stamp have remained 
uncorrupted ; whom some favourable accident, such as 
exile, or indifference, or ill health — or it may be (So- 
crates adds), as in my own peculiar case, an inward 
sign from heaven — has saved from such entanglements. 

Clearly, then, the real philosopher, who is to stand 
aloof from that wild beast's den which we call public 
life, has no place or lot among us as things are now. 
He is like some rare exotic, which, if transplanted to 
a foreign soil, would soon fade and wither ; for he re- 
quires a perfect State to fulfil the perfection of his own 
nature — a State such as may perhaps have once existed 
in ^the countless ages that are passed, or even exists 
now " in some foreign clime far beyond the limits of 
our own horizon." * 

And in this State, of which we are giving the glo- 
rious outlines, philosophers must rule, in spite of their 
personal reluctance ; for they owe us nurture - wages 
for their training, and must for a time forego their 
higher life of contemplation. They will be nobly 
fitted for their office, for their intellectual training will 

* Here, at the end of the Sixth and the beginning of the 
Seventh Book in the original, comes a description of the higher 
education which these philosophers must undergo, and of which 
a sketch is given in chap. vii. 



128 PLATO. 

have taken them step by step through the higher 
branches of knowledge- — Arithmetic, Geometry, and 
Astronomy — all studied with a view to deeper and ideal 
truths. By a strict and repeated process of selection, 
all except those of a resolute and noble nature will be 
excluded from the number of these " saviours of the 
State ) " again and again these will be tested and ex- 
amined, and a select list made, till at last the studies 
of the chosen few w r ill culminate in Dialectic, the cop- 
ing-stone of all the Sciences. Their souls will then 
have mounted from gloom to daylight ; they will com- 
prehend first principles, and they will be privileged to 
know and define in its real nature the Idea of Good. 
At the age of fifty they shall be tested for their final 
w r ork, and if they come out unscathed from the trial, 
the remainder of their life shall be passed partly in 
philosophy, partly in practical politics — till death shall 
remove them to the Islands of the Blest, and a grate- 
ful city shall honour them with monuments and 
sacrifices. 



Such is our State, continues Socrates in the Eighth 
Book, — perfect, so long as its various parts shall act in 
harmony ; but, like other mortal productions, it is fated 
to change and decay at a certain period, determined by 
a mystic number. So also there is a cycle w T hich con- 
trols all human births for good or evil ; and, in the 
lapse of years, it must be that our Guardians will miss 
the propitious time; a degenerate offspring will thus 
come into being, Education will languish, and there 
will be a gradual decline in the Constitution. 



THE REPUBLIC. 129 

The first stage in this " decline and fall" will be a 
Timocracy, marked by a spirit of ambition and love of 
gain ; in which the art of war will preponderate, and 
our Guardians will think lightly of philosophy and 
much of political power. 

Then comes an Oligarchy, where gold is all-power- 
ful and virtue is depreciated ; and the State becomes 
divided into two hostile classes — one enormously rich, 
the other miserably poor ; and in it paupers and crim- 
inals multiply, and education deteriorates. 

There is a change, says our theorist, in the character 
of the individual citizen corresponding to each of these 
changes in the form of government ; but it must be 
confessed that the minute analysis of the causes of 
this change, and the result of certain characteristics 
in each parent, would strike a modern reader as some- 
thing more than fanciful. 

The intemperate desire of riches, and the licence and 
extravagance thus encouraged, do their own work in 
the State, until you find everywhere grasping misers 
and ruined spendthrifts. Meanwhile the lower orders 
grow turbulent and conscious of their power. Their 
insubordination soon brings matters to a crisis : there 
is a revolution, and a Democracy is the result. This 
may be defined as " a pleasant and lawless and motley 
constitution, giving equal rights to unequal persons ; " 
and it is pervaded by a marvellous freedom in speech 
and action, and a strange diversity of character. Each 
man does what he likes in his own eyes, with a mag- 
nanimous disregard of the law : he obeys or disobeys 
at his own pleasure ; and if some criminal be sentenced 

a. c. vol. xix, I 



; 



130 PL A TO. 

to death or exile, you will probably meet him the next 
day, come to life again, and parading the streets like a 
hero. There is something splendid, concludes Socrates 
comically, in the forbearance of such a commonwealth, 
and in its entire superiority to all petty considerations. 

Again, the democrat is like the democracy. Brought 
up in a miserly and ignorant way by his father, the 
oligarch, the young man is soon corrupted by bad com- 
pany, and a swarm of passions and wild and presump- 
tuous theories seize the citadel of his reason, whence 
temperance and modesty are expelled. Evea if not 
thoroughly reprobate, he is at the mercy of each fleet- 
ing caprice, and gives way to the humour of the hour, 
now revelling with wine and music, now fasting on 
bread and water — now an idler, and now a student; by 
turns politician, general, or trader.* 

In a thoroughgoing democracy we have liberty and 
equality everywhere — in fact, there is soon a uni- 
versal anarchy. Eespect for rank and age soon dies 
out. Father and son, teacher and scholar, master and 
servant, are all on the same dead level. The very 
animals (says the speaker, with an amusing touch of 
satire) become gorged with freedom, and will run at 
you if you get in their way. 

* Professor Jowett quotes Dry den's well-known description 
of the Duke of Buckingham — 

"A man so various that he seemed to be 
Not one hut all mankind's epitome." 

He thinks that Alcihiades is referred to ; hut the lines would 
apply equally well to Critias, Plato's uncle (Curtius, Hist. Greece, 
ii. 542). 



THE REPUBLIC. 131 

But extremes in politics produce a reaction ; and the 
result of excessive freedom is excessive slavery. From 
a Democracy to a Tyranny is an easy stage. Some 
demagogue, who has shown unusual talent in extort- 
ing money from the richer class to feed those " sting- 
ing and stingless drones " of wham we spoke, is 
adopted by the people as their champion, and gradually 
strengthens his influence. It is always the same story 
— he banishes, confiscates, murders, and then his own 
life is threatened, and he obtains a body-guard. Woe 
to the rich man then, if he does not fly at once, for it 
will be arrest and death if he lingers. 

At first the Tyrant will be all smiles and promises ; 
but, once firmly seated, he will change his tactics. He 
will employ his citizens in incessant war to weaken 
their strength, and rid the state of bold and powerful 
spirits ; he will increase his guards, he will plunder 
the rich and humble the strong, and thus free men will 
pass under the yoke of slavery. 

The man who answers to the Tyrant in private life 
will have his soul under the dominion of monstrous 
lusts and appetites, squandering and plundering, and 
passing on from sin to sin. 

Thus a Tyranny is the worst and most miserable 
State of all. Not only are the citizens in it reduced 
to slavery, and distracted by fear and grief, but the 
Tyrant himself, with all his power and splendour, 
never knows the blessings of peace and friendship. 
Like some great slave-master in a desert, he lives 
alone in a crowd : shunned and detested by those 
about him, tortured by remorse, and haunted by a 



132 PLATO. 

lifelong terror, lie is himself the most pitiable slave 
of alL 

The only pleasure that such a man ever knows is 
mere sensual enjoyment — in itself worthless and fleet- 
ing. The attractions of gold or of glory are of a no- 
bler stamp ; but the best and purest of all pleasures 
that a man can feel, and the ineffable sweetness of 
which the world can never realise, is that which the 
philosopher alone finds in the study and contemplation 
of existence. For he prunes close the hydra-headed 
passions by which the many are enslaved, and sub- 
jects the lion to the man, by making reason rule his 
soul. Thus none can measure his happiness ; but it 
cannot be possessed by any in perfection, save in our 
own ideal state — " which does not, indeed, at present 
exist in this world, but has, perhaps, its pattern laid 
up in heaven for him who is willing to see it, and, 
seeing it, rules his life on earth accordingly."* 

Such is the Platonic State, with its strange medley 
of noble aspirations and impracticable details. How 
far Plato himself believed it to be ideal, or how far, if he 
had been Alexander's tutor, he would have tried to 
carry it out in history, we have no means of telling. 
But it is easy to understand his feeling, and the point 
of view from which he wrote. He is weary of the pre- 
tensions, the falsehood, and the low morality around 
him — (" it is dreadful to think," he says, " that half the 
people we meet have perjured themselves in one of the 
numerous law-courts ") — and so he turns away with a 

* Rep. ix. ad fin. 



THE REPUBLIC. 133 

sort of despair from the sad realities of Athenian life ; 
and instead of writing a bitter satire, as a Roman might 
have done, or waging war against the society he de- 
spises in " latter-day pamphlets," he throws himself as 
far as he can out of the present, with all its degrading 
associations, and builds for himself (as we have seen) 
a new State — after a divine and perfect pattern — in 
a world a thousand leagues from his own. 

Those " three waves " of the " Republic " (as Socrates 
terms them) — the community of families and that of 
property, and the assumption that philosophers must 
be kings — which threaten to swamp the argument even 
with such friendly criticism as Glaucon and Adeimantus 
venture to offer, prove with less partial opponents insur- 
mountable obstacles to the realisation of the Platonic 
State. Aristotle heads the list of objectors, and disap- 
proves both of the end and the means to be pursued. 
So far from promoting the unity of the State, he argues 
that Plato's system of Communism will create an end- 
less division of interests and sympathies ; will tend to 
destroy the security of life and property ; and, among 
other evils, will do away with the virtues of charity 
and liberality, by allowing no room for their exercise. 
Modern critics generally touch upon the repression of 
all individual energy, the cramping of all free thought 
and action, and the necessary abolition of any sense of 
mutual rights and obligations which are necessary parts 
of Plato's system ; and De Quincey has denounced in 
an eloquent passage the social immorality encouraged by 
Plato's marriage regulations, and his " sensual bounty 
on infanticide " — " cutting adrift the little boat to go 



134 FLA TO. 

down the Niagara of violent death, in the very next 
night after its launching on its unknown river of life." * 
Plato's " Eepublic " is the first of a long series of ideal 
States ;t and we find the original thought "Romanised " 
by Cicero, " Christianised " by St Augustine in his 
■ City of God/ and in more modern times reappearing 
in Sir Thomas More's ' Utopia/ and in Lord Bacon's 
c New Atlantis/ with its wonderful anticipations of 
modern science. We have in our own day seen speci- 
mens of the same class of literature in works like 
'Erewhon' and 'The Coming Race.' 

THE LAWS. 

This Dialogue is the last and the longest that Plato 
wrote, and bears traces of the hand of old age. The 
fire and spirit of his earlier works seems gone, while 
Plato himself is changed ; he is not only older, but 
more conservative, more dogmatic, and — we must also 
say — more intolerant and narrower-minded than was 
his wont. Much had happened since he wrote the 
" Republic " to disenchant him of visionary politics. 
His mission to Syracuse had proved, as we have seen, 
a miserable failure, and his grand schemes of reform 
had sadly ended in the violent death of his friend 
Dion. And so the tone of the " Laws " is grave, prosaic, 
and even commonplace in its trivial details. The 
high aspirations of the " Republic " have sobered down 
into a tedious and minute legislation. The king- 

* De Qnincey, viii. 

f An interesting account of these States may be found in Sir 
G. C. Lewis's Methods of Eeasoning in Politics, II. ch. xxii. 



THE LA WS. 135 

philosophers, with their golden pedigree and elaborate 
training, are here superseded by a council of elderly 
citizens elected by vote. The celestial world of " Ideas n 
and the sublime heights of Dialectic have passed from 
view ; the study of science is curtailed ; and it is 
even hinted that a young man may possibly have 
too much of education. Eut Plato seems to have 
grown even more impressed than before with the be- 
lief that the State should mould the characters and 
keep the consciences of its citizens : he is imbued, 
says Mr Grote, " with the persecuting spirit of mediae- 
val Catholicism ;" there is a strict "Act of Uniformity 9 " 
and all dissenters from it are branded as criminals ; 
while religion, poetry, music, and education generally 
are placed under State surveillance. 

The first four books of the " Laws " form a kind 
of desultory preface to the detailed legislation which 
occupies the remaining eight. The scene of the Dia- 
logue is laid in the island of Crete, and the speakers 
are three old men — an Athenian, a Spartan, and a 
Cretan — who meet on the road to the temple of 
Jupiter at Gnossus, and discuss, as they walk, the form 
of government in their respective States. Sparta and 
Crete were then standing instances of the perfection to 
which military training might be brought, and a war- 
like ideal realised. Both cities resembled permanent 
camps, with severe discipline, continual drill, a public 
mess, and barrack life taking the place of family k 
life and affections. But the Athenian, though not 
denying the superiority of Spartan troops, finds much 
to criticise in the principle of the Spartan system. It 



136 PLATO, 

has only developed courage, which is, after all, but a 
fourth-rate virtue ; and it has proceeded on the mis- 
taken notion that man's natural state is war. Other 
virtues — such as wisdom and temperance — are thus 
made of little account ; and Sparta has banished 
pleasure, which is really as effectual a test of self- 
control as pain. Wine, too, is forbidden there — 
though it is a most useful medium for discovering a 
man's strength or weakness ; indeed, at the festival of 
Bacchus there ought, the Athenian thinks, to be a 
drinking tournament — with a sober president — and all 
honour should be paid to the youth who could drink 
hardest and longest. For it is clear that the man with 
the strongest head at the banquet will be the coolest 
and most imperturbable on the battle-field. Again, 
wine softens and humanises the character; it cures 
the sourness of old age, and under its influence we 
renew our youth and forget our sorrows. And if you 
want to try a friend's honour and integrity — in vino 
Veritas ; ply him with wine, and you will read all the 
secrets of his heart. But with all this, there should be 
a stringent "Licensing Act." The times and seasons 
when wine may be drunk should be strictly defined by 
law ; and no soldier on active service, no slave, no 
judge or magistrate during his year of office, no pilot 
on duty, should be allowed to drink wine at all ; and, 
if these precautions are carried out, a city will not 
need many vineyards. 

The use of wine as a means of training opens the 
general question of Education, which is examined again 
at greater length in the Seventh Book of the treatise ; 



THE LAWS. 137 

and then Plato passes on to the origin of society. In 
the " Republic," the State is made to spring from the 
mutual needs of men ; but here it is developed from 
the House — in fact, we find in this treatise the 
' ' patriarch al " th eory. 

In the illimitable past, says Plato, there must have 
been thousands and thousands of cities which rose and 
flourished for a time, and then were swept away ; for 
at certain fixed periods a deluge comes, which covers 
the whole earth and destroys all existing civilisation, 
leaving only a vast expanse of desert, and a few sur- 
vivors on the mountain-tops. This remnant clings 
together with the instinct of self-preservation. Each 
little family, under the strict rule of the " house 
father/' lives in a primitive and simple manner on the 
produce of its flocks and herds, like the Homeric 
Cyclops : — 

" Unsown, un tended, corn and wine and oil 
Spring to their hand ; but they no councils know, 
Nor justice, but for ever lawless go. 
Housed in the hills, they neither buy nor sell, 
No kindly offices demand or sIioav ; 
Each in the hollow cave where he doth dwell 
Gives law to wile and children, as he thinketh well.* * 

Gradually several of these isolated units coalesced, 
and thus the family developed into the tribe, and 
several tribes uniting made the State. Then came a 
government, and a code of laws. 

* Homer, Od. ix., Worsley's transl. There is an interest- 
ing account of this patriarchal age in Maine's Ancient Law, 
chap. v. 



138 PLATO. 

Plato next passes in review the ancient legends of 
his own country — the Trojan War, the Keturn of the 
Heraclidse, the Dorian settlement in the Peloponnese ; 
and he traces in the history of those times seven 
distinct and recognised titles to obedience — namely, 
the authority of parents over children, of nobles over 
inferiors, of elder over younger, of master over slave, 
the natural principle that the strong should rule the 
weak, and the no less natural principle that the wise 
should have dominion over the fool ; and lastly, there 
is the power conferred by the casting of the lot — in 
which Plato recognises, as distinctly as the Hebrew 
legislator, the hand of Heaven. 

A great lesson, he continues, may be learned from 
these ancient States — for they all perished from inter- 
nal discords — that limited power among the rulers, and 
harmony and obedience to the laws among the subjects, 
are the safeguards of every community. Thus Provi- 
dence wisely tempered the kingly power in Sparta 
with Ephors and a Senate, and so produced a healthy 
balance in the constitution; while Persia fell from her 
high place among the nations from the excess of 
despotic power, and the want of goodwill between 
the despot and his people. The great Cyrus and 
Darius both received a warrior's training, and won 
their own way to the throne ; while Cambyses and 
Xerxes, born in the purple and bred in the harem, 
proved weak and degenerate princes, and their, ruin 
was the result of their evil bringing up. Athens, again, 
went wrong in the other extreme ; for with us, says the 
Athenian, it is always excess of freedom that does the 



THE LA WS. 139 

mischief. Of old, law was supreme in every part of the 
State — especially in music, with its four primitive and 
simple divisions. Eeverence, and the fear " which the 
coward never feels," prevailed ; all classes were united, 
and fought for their common hearths and sepulchres ; 
and the grand result was Marathon and Salamis. 
But gradually a change has come over our national 
character. There has heen a growing lawlessness, be- 
ginning in the Music, and spreading thence through- 
out the community. We no longer any of us listen in 
respectful silence to the judgment of superior interests, 
but are one and all become accomplished critics, and 
every one knows everything. Awe and reverence have 
gone for ever ; and there is a shameless disregard for 
authority, whether of parents, or elders, or rulers. 
Even the majesty of the gods is slighted, and the 
oaths sworn by them are made of no account. 



Here, with the Third Book, ends " the prelude " to 
the " Laws." By a happy coincidence (says the Cretan 
in the Dialogue), his countrymen are just going to 
found a colony, and he is one of the ten commis- 
sioners appointed to give laws to the colonists. "Will 
the Athenian give him some hints on the subject? 

It is clear (replies the Athenian) that all legislation 
should aim at carrying out three jjrinciples — namely, 
freedom, unity, and wisdom 5 and that State will be 
best where the law is best administered by the rulers 
who are its servants, and where the happiness of the 
community is the sole object of their legislation. 



140 PLATO. 

"The difficulty is to find the divine love of temperate 
and just institutions existing in any powerful forms of 
government, whether in a monarchy or oligarchy of wealth 
or of birth. You might as well hope to reproduce the 
character of Nestor, who is said to have excelled all men 
in the power of speech, and yet more in his temperance. 
This, however, according to the tradition, was in the times 
of Troy : in our own days there is nothing of the sort. 
But if such an one either has or ever shall come into being, 
or is now among us, blessed is he, and blessed are they 
who hear the wise words that flow from his lips. And 
this may be said of power in general : when the supreme 
power in man coincides with the greatest wisdom and 
temperance, then the best laws are by nature framed, and 
the best constitution ; but in no other way will they ever 
come into being." — J. 

If you could find a despot, young, noble, and en- 
thusiastic — fortunate, moreover, in being advised by 
some great legislator — you will have your city founded 
at once ; for the change from a despotism to a perfect 
government is the easiest of all.* 

In our legislation we will head each enactment with 
a prelude or preamble, to show the nature of the case 
and the spirit of the law, — appealing thus to the reason 
of our citizens, that they be rather persuaded than forced 
to obey ; more especially as there are many cases which 
the law can never reach, and where we can only declare 
the solemn utterances of Heaven, speaking through the 
law to all who are willing to hear and understand. 

* Plato's opinion of the " Tyrant" is greatly modified, since 
he declared in the "Republic" that "tyranny" was 729 degrees 
removed from perfection ; but here he is probably thinking of 
the younger Dionysius (see p. 8). 



THE LAWS. 141 

Our city, then, shall be built nine miles from the 
sea, in a country which lias more hill than plain. 
There will be little timber for shipbuilding ; but this 
is of no importance, as we shall not aim at naval 
power, nor will war be our normal state. The colon- 
ists should, if possible, be all of the same country — 
like a swarm of bees — as they will be then more united; 
though perhaps a mixed multitude would be more 
tractable. 

The number of citizens shall be originally fixed, and 
as far as possible kept, at 5040,"' and to each citizen 
shall be awarded land sufficient to maintain his family 
(for community of property cannot be carried out) ; 
but son shall succeed father, and none shall sell or 
divide his lot, on pain of being cursed by the priests 
as an offender against heaven and the law. There 
shall be a State currency ; but no usury or accumula- 
tion of private fortune shall be allowed, so that ex- 
tremes of wealth and poverty may be equally avoided. 

The State is to be governed in somewhat complicated 
fashion. There are to be thirty-seven guardians of the 
laws, and a council of 360 elected from the whole body 
of citizens. Each department of public business is to 
have its own officers. There are to be " country war- 
dens,'' who would seem to combine the duties of modern 
county court judges and rural police. For municipal 
duties there are wardens of the city and market, all 

* Plato gives as his reason for fixing on this number, that it 
is easily divisible. He remarks also that it is not too large to 
admit of their all knowing one another, — though that would 
u> v olre a somewhat large circle Oi acquaintance. 



142 PLATO. 

with magisterial powers. There are to be law-courts 
and judges — though arbitration is recommended where 
it is possible — and there is a high court of appeal. 

Marriages are to be strictly regulated, since their ob- 
ject is to produce a noble and healthy offspring. Slaves 
should be treated with more perfect justice than we 
show to equals, and all levity and cruelty towards 
them should be avoided. 

Then follow some desultory remarks on education, 
which should (Plato tl links-) be compulsory — since chil- 
dren belong more to the State than to their parents — 
and should be directed by a competent minister of pub- 
lic instruction. Infants should be reared with great 
care — soothed with song, " for they roar continually 
the first three years of their life " — and carried about in 
their nurses' arms, " as you see our young nobles carry 
their fighting-cocks. ; ' At the age of six, boys are to 
be separated from girls, and are to learn riding and 
the use of weapons. Their amusements are to be 
carefully watched, as any change in them may breed 
revolution in the State. They are to learn dancing 
to give them stately and graceful movement, and 
wrestling to give them quickness and agility, and 
music to humanise their souls. But both music and 
song are to be strictly regulated ; there is to be a 
censorship of the press, and all objectionable poetry 
is to be expunged. (Plato hints that the " homilies " 
with which his laws are prefaced would be admirable 
exercises to be committed to memory.) Till the age 
of thirteen they are to learn their grammar and 
letters; afterwards the use of the lyre, and grave and 



THE LA WS. 143 

simple melodies ; and their education is to conclude 
with the rudiments of science, which should, if pos- 
sible, he taught in an interesting manner. 

There must be a religious festival (continues the 
Athenian) on every day in the year, and a monthly 
meeting of all the citizens to practise warlike exer- 
cises, when there should be public races for the youths 
and maidens. 

In the Ninth Book, we have the somewhat weari- 
some details of a criminal code, in which Plato justi- 
fies the title given to him by Numenius of "the 
Moses who wrote in Attic Greek. 7 ' Certainly some 
of the regulations are much in the spirit of the writer 
of Leviticus — such as, that no man shall remove his 
neighbour's landmark, or cut off his supply of water ; 
that the traveller may pluck the grapes at the time of 
vintage ; and we have also, as in the law of Moses, 
the "avenger of blood" and purification by the priest. 

Plato here, as elsewhere, attributes crime in a great 
measure to ignorance — a sort of moral blindness. We 
should (he says), if possible, heal the distemper of the 
criminal soul, or, if he be incurable, he must be put 
to death. There are certain unpardonable offenders 
— the profaner of temples, the would-be tyrant, the 
traitor or conspirator, and the wilful shedder of inno- 
cent blood, — these must all suffer the extreme penalty. 
He distinguishes between the various kinds of homi- 
cide, — in some cases a line, in others exile, is sufficient 
punishment ; but for the parricide he reserves a more 
awful doom — he shall be slain by the judges, and his 
body exposed where three ways meet, and then cast 



144 PLATO. 

beyond the borders ; while the criminal " who has 
taken the life that ought to be dearer to him than all 
others — his own" — shall be buried alone in a deso- 
late place, without tomb or monument to show his 
grave. 

The deep-seated aversion and contempt with which 
every Greek regarded trade and traders is shown in 
Plato's regulations as to commerce and the market. 
Among his 5040 citizens there was not to be found a 
single retail trader. Such a degrading occupation was 
to be left entirely to the resident foreigners, if any 
chose to engage in it. If some great personage (" the 
very idea is absurd," he says) were to open a shop, and 
thus set a precedent, things might be different. As 
it is, trade carries with it the stamp of dishonour. 
And then follow other restrictions, the necessity for 
which serves to show us that Greek shopkeepers prac- 
tised much the same imposition on their customers 
as our own. There was to be no adulteration, no 
tricks of sale, and all contracts were to be rigorously 
adhered to. 

The last two books are taken up with a number of 
miscellaneous regulations respecting civil rights and 
duties. The law is to take the power of will-making 
into its own hands, and regulate the succession of 
property "without listening to the outcry of dying 
persons." Orphans — "the most sacred of all deposits" 
- — are to be protected by the State. A husband and 
wife with " incompatible tempers " should be divorced. 
Witchcraft is to be punished with death. No beggar 
is to be allowed in the land. No man under forty 



THE LAWS. lib 

years of age may travel abroad. Eodies are to be 
exposed for three days "before "burial, to see if they are 
really dead. Magistrates shall give a yearly account 
of their office before certain public " Examiners," who 
must be carefully selected, and, if found worthy, shall 
have special honours paid to them during life, and at 
their death a solemn public burial, — not with sorrow 
or lamentation; but the corpse shall be clad in 
robes of white, and choruses of youths and men shall 
chant their praises, and yearly contests in music and 
gymnastics be celebrated at their tomb. 

Lastly, there is to be a supreme council of twenty 
members — ten of the oldest citizens, and ten younger 
men afterwards added to their number — who shall 
hold their meetings before daybreak. This council, 
like a " central Conservative organ," * is to be the 
anchor of the constitution — carrying out in every 
detail the original intention of the founder, making 
his laws irreversible as the threads- of fate, and secur- 
ing that uniformity of faith among the citizens, and 
that belief in the unity of Virtue, which can be the 
only safeguard of the " City of the Magnetes " — the 
new colony which they are about to found. 

* Grote, iii. 447. 



a. c. vol. xix. 



CHAPTER VT. 

THE MYTHS OF PLATO, 

" The light that never was on sea or land, 
The consecration, and the poet's dream." 

—Wordsworth. 

"As Being is to Becoming," says Plato, " so Truth 
is to Faith." Where a man cannot prove, he must be 
content to believe; and the myths which the philos- 
opher introduces here and there are guesses after this 
Truth which he believes and feels, but cannot pre- 
cisely define. He is conscious that there are more 
things in heaven and earth than are " dreamed of in 
his philosophy," and that there are some unseen reali- 
ties transcending all mortal experience ; and so he 
builds up his doctrine of ideas, embodies them in cir- 
cumstances, gives them " a local habitation and a 
name," and describes in detail the mysteries of the 
"unknown future and the unrecorded past. These 
descriptions are not intended, he says, to be exactly 
true. " No man of sense ought to affirm that." All 
that he claims for them is verisimilitude. " We may 
venture to think without impropriety that something 
of the kind is true." Nor, again, is it desirable that 



THE CREATION OF MAX. 147 

these myths should be strictly interpreted ; so to in- 
terpret them would, he thinks, " be the task — and not 
a very enviable one— of some person who had plenty 
of time on his hands."* 

We have no means of telling how far these Myths 
are the creation of Plato's own prolific fancy, or how 
far they are compiled from the ancient Mysteries of 
his own country, from Pythagoraean tradition, or from 
oriental legends. But whatever their source may be, 
his genius has given them a character and beauty of 
their own ; nowhere is his style so grand and impres- 
sive as in these fictions, on which he lavishes, as on 
some " rich strand/' all the treasures of his mind. 

THE CREATION OF MAN. 

(From the "Tiraseus.") 

The world we live in, says the astronomer Tim sens, 
being visible, tangible, and perishable — unlike the 
world of eternal Ideas — must have been created, and if 
created, must have been the work of some great First 
Cause or Architect, who fashioned it after an eternal 
pattern ; " for the work is the fairest of creations, and 
he is the best of causes." Of this indeed we can have 
no certain knowledge, but only belief or conjecture, 
since after all we are but mortal men. 

The Creator, being goodness himself, wished that 
his work should also be good like him ; and thus he 
brought order out of Chaos, and "put intelligence in 
soul and soul in body, and framed the universe to be 

* Phsedrus, 229. 



148 PLATO. 

the best and fairest work in nature. And therefore, 
using the language of probability, we may say that the 
world became a living soul, and truly rational, through 
the providence of God." It was created of four entire 
elements, blended together in geometrical proportion ; 
and its form was a perfect and solid sphere, smooth 
and complete, and moving m a oiioie. In the centre 
was the soul (also compounded according to a scale of 
harmony), and circulating all impressions from the 
ideal essence through every part of this vast and 
visible animal, which included in itself all visible 
creation. 

" When the Father and Creator saw the image that he 
had made of the eternal gods moving and living, he was 
delighted, and in his joy determined to make his work still 
more like the pattern ; and as the pattern was an eternal 
creature, he sought to make the universe the same as far as 
it might be. Now the nature of the intelligible being is 
eternal, and to bestow eternity on the creature was wholly 
impossible. But he resolved to make a moving image of 
eternity, and as he set in order the heaven, he made this 
eternal image having a motion according to number, while 
eternity rested in unity ; and this is what we call time. 
For there were no days and nights, and months and years, 
before the heaven was created, but when he created the 
heaven he created them also. All these are the parts of 
time, and the past and future, are created species of time, 
which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal 
essence : for we say indeed that he was, he is, he will be ; 
but the truth is that ' he is' alone truly expresses him, and 
that i was' and ' will be' are only to be spoken in the gen- 
eration in time, for they are motions ; but that which is 
immovably the same cannot become older or younger by 



THE CREATION OF MAN. 149 

time, nor ever did or has become, or hereafter will be, 
older, nor is subject at all to any of those states of genera- 
tion which attach to the movements of sensible things. 
These are the forms of time when imitating eternity and 
moving in a circle measured by number." — J. 

Time was thus created with the heavens, in order that 
if one was destroyed the other might likewise perish. 
Then the Deity created the moon and stars to move 
in their appointed orbits — some fixed, some wandering, 
— but all were bodies with living souls imitating the 
eternal nature ; and he " lighted a fire which, we now 
call the sun," that men might have light, and learn 
from the regular succession of day and night the use 
of numbers. " And the month was created when the 
moon had completed her orbit and overtaken the sun, 
and the year when the sun had completed his own 
orbit." Of all these stars, which are really gods, 
the earth, our nurse, was the first and oldest, and was 
made to revolve on her own axis in the centre of the 
spheres.* 

Then the Creator commanded the other gods, of 
whose generation we know nothing except from tradi- 
tion, to finish his good work by weaving together 
mortal and immortal elements, and forming living 
creatures. To these he distributed souls equal in num- 
ber to the stars, assigning to each star a soul ; and he 
showed to each the nature of the universe, and his own 
decrees of destiny : declaring that whosoever lived a 

* The various revolutions and eclipses of the heavenly bodies, 
according to this Platonic myth, are much too perplexing to 
be dealt with here. 



150 PLATO. 

righteous life upon earth " should return again to the 
habitation of his star, and there have a "blessed exist- 
ence ; " but if he lived unrighteously, he should de- 
scend lower and lower in the scale of creation — -from a 
man to a woman, and from a woman to some animal, 
until at last the spirit should triumph over the flesh, 
and his reason, which had never become extinct, should 
restore him to his first and higher self. 

And in the head of man the gods put an immortal 
soul, to be master of the body ; and they gave to the 
body itself its proper limbs and powers of movement 
and sensation, and in the eyes they placed a pure and 
gentle fire, which burns not, but streams forth and 
mingles with the light of day. And they gave man 
sight, that he might discern the unerring and intelli- 
gent motion of the stars, and order his own mind with 
like exactness ; and they gave him voice and hearing, 
that music might harmonise his soul. 

Besides the invisible and imperishable forms of the 
elements, and the visible images of these Forms — 
namely, the elements themselves — there is a third 
hind of being, a formless space or chaos, where these 
images are stored up, and which is the source and 
nurse of all generation. From this chaos the great 
Architect brought forth the four elements, and shook 
them together " in the vessel of space," and sifted and 
divided them " as grain is sifted by the winnowing 
fan," and fashioned them according to certain com- 
binations of form and number. Thus the earth was 
formed like a cube, the most perfect and solid of all 
figures ; while fire took the shape of a pyramid, and 



THE CREATION OF MAN. 151 

so with air and water. All these elements were 
formed according to continuous geometrical propor- 
tion. 

[Then follows a curious but fanciful description of 
the various phenomena of light, sound, and colour, 
which, however, the reader may be spared.] 

The gods (continues Timseus) gave to man a triple 
soul : firstly, an immortal soul, dwelling in the head, 
with the heart acting as its guard-house, and carrying 
out its commands by means of a fiery network of 
veins through every part of the body : secondly, a 
mortal soul, which is again divided — the nobler part 
dwelling in the breast, and, though itself moved by fear 
and anger, taking the side of reason against desire ; 
while the lower part, made up of unruly passions and 
carnal appetites, is chained like a wild beast in the 
belly, far from the council-chamber of reason, which 
it would otherwise disturb. Now the gods knew that 
this lowest soul would never listen to reason, and they 
therefore ruled it by means of images reflected on the 
smooth and brilliant surface of the liver — the seat of 
prophetic inspiration — sometimes fair and sweet, some- 
times dark and discoloured by passion. 

The marrow, which binds together soul and body, is 
the seed-plot of mortal life, and, like the world, was 
originally formed from triangles. These are sharpest 
and freshest in our childhood, but they grow blunted 
and gradually wear out in old age, till at last their * 
fastenings are loosened, and " they unfix also the 
bonds of the soul, and she being released in the order 
of nature joyfully flies away." 



152 PLATO. 

Diseases spring from the disturbance of the original 
elements of which our bodies are composed ; and the 
soul also suffers from two mental distempers — madness 
and ignorance. As far as possible, nature should be 
left to herself ; but since there is a strong sympathy 
between soul and body, the conditions of health in 
both must be observed ; the limbs should be trained 
by exercise, and the mind should be educated by 
music and philosophy. For no man can prolong his 
life beyond a certain time ; and medicines ignorantly 
administered multiply diseases and destroy the con- 
stitution. 

Man should exercise in due proportion the three souls 
implanted in him, more especially that highest and 
divinest element in our heads, which makes us look 
upward like plants, and draws our thoughts from earth 
to heaven. If he seeks wisdom and truth, then he 
" must of necessity, so far as human nature is capable 
of attaining immortality, become all immortal, as he is 
ever serving the divine power, and having the genius 
that dwells in him in the most perfect order, his hap- 
piness will be complete/' But if he gratifies ambition 
and desire, he will degenerate into a merely mortal 
being, and after this life will lose his high place in 
creation, first passing into the form of a woman, and 
then into the still lower form of an animal ; for ani- 
mals are only deteriorated humanity — the birds being 
" innocent and light-minded men," who thought in 
their simplicity that sight alone was needed to know 
the truths of celestial regions; and the quadrupeds 
and wild animals being all more or less brutal and 



THE ISLAND OF ATLANTIS. 153 

stolid, till at last the lowest stage of all is reached in 
the fishes. 

"These were made out of the most entirely ignorant and 
senseless beings, whom the transformers did not think any 
longer worthy of pure respiration, because they possessed 
a soul which was made impure by all sorts of transgression ; 
and instead of allowing them to respire the subtle and pure 
element of air, they thrust them into the water, and gave 
them a deep and muddy medium of respiration ; and 
hence arose the race of fishes and oysters, and other aqua- 
tic animals, which have received the most remote habita- 
tions as a punishment of their extreme ignorance. These 
are the laws by which animals pass into one another, both 
now and ever changing as they lose or gain wisdom and 
folly."— J. 

Thus we may call the world " a visible animal com- 
prehending the visible — itself a visible and sensible 
God, the image of Him who is intelligible, the greatest, 
best, fairest, and one most perfect Universe." 

THE ISLAND OF ATLANTIS.* 

The day after the long discussion of the " Kepublic," 
Socrates meets three of his friends who had been 
present — Hermocrates, a rising statesman, Timasus, 
a distinguished astronomer of Locris (who gives his 
name to the Dialogue just noticed), and Critias, a 
young Athenian whose accomplishments made him 
seem " all mankind's epitome " — being politician, 

* Only two fragments of this "Epic" have come down to 
us — the prologue and the catastrophe, found in two Dialogues 
(the *' Tiniseus" and the " Critias"), the latter of which is broken 
off abruptly. 



154 PLATO. 

sophist, poet, musician, all in one. At their request 
Socrates sums up his theories of the previous day, 
but professes himself to be hardly satisfied with his 
ideal sketch. Like one who has seen animals in a 
painting or at rest, ajid who would like to see them 
in active movement, so, he tells them, he would like to 
see how his imaginary State would really act in some 
great crisis, and how his citizens would bear them- 
selves when they went forth to war ; and he appeals 
to his friends to help him to exhibit his republic play- 
ing a noble part in history. And then Critias tells 
" an old-world story," handed down in his family from 
his great-grandfather Dropidas, who had heard it from 
Solon, and Solon had himself heard it in this wise. 

Near the mouths of the Nile in Egypt stands the 
ancient ciry called Sais, where Amasis the king was 
born, founded by a goddess whom the Egyptians 
call Neith and the Greeks Athene. Thither Solon 
came in his travels, and was received with great 
honour ; and he asked many questions of the priests 
about the times of old, and told them many ancient 
legends, as he thought them, of his own land. But 
one of the priests, being himself of a great age, said : 
" Solon, you Greeks are always children, and there 
is not an old man among you all. You have no tradi- 
tions that are really grey with time, and your stories 
of Deucalion and Phaeton are only the partial history 
of one out of many destructions by flood and fire w T hich 
have come at certain periods upon mankind, sweeping 
away states, and with them letters and all knowledge. 
The Nile has preserved our land from such oalami- 



THE ISLAND OF ATLANTIS. 155 

ties ; and therefore we have faithful records of past 
ages preserved in our temples, while you are ever 
beginning your history afresh, and know nothing of 
what formerly came to pass in your own land or in any 
other ; all your so-called genealogies are but children's 
tales. You do not even know that your own city, 9000 
years ago, before the great Deluge, was foremost of all 
in war and peace, and is said to have done the greatest 
deeds, and to have possessed the fairest constitution of 
any city under heaven. And the same great goddess 
who founded our city founded yours also ; for she and 
her brother Hephaestus obtained the land of Athens as 
their lot, and they planted there a race of brave men, 
and gave them a fair and fertile soil, and rich pastures, 
and a healthy climate. And these ancient Athenians 
(so Critias tells Socrates) realised in actual life the strict 
division of classes laid down in your ' Eepublic ; ' and 
their guardian soldiers — both men and women — were 
trained and went out to battle together like yours; and 
none among them had house or family or gold that he 
could call his own, but they had all things in common. 
And the number of these guardians neither increased 
nor decreased, but was always twenty thousand. And 
their most famous victory was over the vast army sent 
forth from the island of Atlantis. 

" Now, this island was of a great size— larger than all 
Asia and Libya together — and was situated over against 
the straits now called the Pillars of Hercules. It was 
founded by the god Neptune, who divided the land 
among the ten sons that were born to him by a mortal 
woman. And the eldest, who was called Atlas, he 



156 PLATO. 

made king of all the island ; and lie made his brethren 
princes nnder him, and gave them rule over many men 
and wide provinces. And the descendants of Atlas 
multiplied, and he had wealth and power such as no 
other king ever had before or since. And the soil 
and climate of this island were so good, that the fruits 
of the earth ripened twice a-year ; and there was 
abundance of both minerals and metals, and many 
elephants and other tame and wild animals of various 
kinds. And the city on the mountain in the centre 
of the island was a wondrous sight to behold ; for 
bridges wexe built across the ' zones of sea ' which 
Neptune had made, and a canal was dug from the city 
to the sea, and a fortress was built having stone walls 
plated with tin and brass and the red ' mountain 
bronze/ and in the midst was the king's palace and 
the vast temple of Neptune, covered with silver, and 
having pinnacles of gold and a roof of ivory. And 
within was a golden statue of the god himself riding 
in a chariot drawn by six winged horses — so huge 
that he touched the roof ; and around were a hundred 
Nereids riding upon dolphins, and outside the temple 
were golden statues of the ten kings and their wives. 
Besides all these things there were many baths and 
fountains, and public gardens and exercise grounds, 
and dockyards and harbours full of merchant vessels 
and ships of war. 

" And the plain around the city was sheltered by 
mountains, and guarded by a vast ditch 100 feet deep, 
and 600 feet broad, and more than 3000 miles long. 
And the ten kings who ruled the island held council 



THE CHARIOT OF THE SOUL. 157 

and offered sacrifice together, and were sworn to assist 
one another in peace and war. And they had 10,000 
chariots and a fleet of 1200 ships. 

"And for many generations the people of the island 
were obedient to the laws, and their kings ruled them 
wisely and uprightly, setting no value on their riches, 
nor caring for aught save for virtue only. But as 
time went on, the divine part of their souls grew faint, 
and they waxed insolent, and thus in the very pleni- 
tude of their power they provoked the jealousy of the 
gods, who determined to destroy them. 

" It was then, or soon after, that the armies of 
Atlantis were sent to conquer Athens, as they had 
already conquered Libya and Tyrrhenia. Eut of the 
war which followed we know nothing, save that 
Athens stood alone in the struggle, and won a great 
battle over these barbarians, and that in the space of 
one day and night the victors and the vanquished dis- 
appeared together — for there was an earthquake and a 
deluge, and the earth opened and swallowed up all the 
warriors of Athens, while the great island of Atlantis 
sank beneath the sea. And to this day the sea which 
covers this island is shallow and impassable, and there 
is nothing in the Atlantic Ocean save mud and sand- 
banks." 

THE CHARI3T OF THE SOUL. 

(From the " Phsedrus.") 
Our soul, which has a triple nature, is as a chariot- 
eer riding in a chariot drawn by two winged steeds — 
one of a mortal and the other of an immortal nature. 
Their wings are the divine element, which, if it 



158 PLATO. 

be perfect and fully nourished on the pastures of truth 
and beauty, lifts the soul heavenwards to the dwelling 
of the gods. There, on a certain day, gods and demi- 
gods ascend the heaven of heavens — Zeus leading 
the way in a winged chariot — to hold high festival, 
and all who can may follow. The gods and the im- 
mortal souls, whose steeds have full-grown wings, are 
carried by a revolution of the spheres into a celestial 
world beyond, where all space is filled by a sea of 
intangible essence which the mind — "lord of the soul" 
— alone can contemplate : and here are the absolute 
ideas of Truth and Beauty and Justice. And in these 
divine pastures of pure knowledge the soul feeds during 
the time that the spheres revolve, and rests in perfect 
happiness, and then returns to the heavens whence it 
came, where the steeds feast in their stalls on nectar 
and ambrosia. 

But only to a few souls out of many is it granted to 
see these celestial visions. The rest are carried into 
the gulfs of space by the plunging of the unruly 
horses, or lamed by unskilful driving ; and often the 
wings droop or are broken, and the soul fails to see 
the light, and sinks to earth " beneath the double load 
of forgetfulness or vice." And then she takes the form 
of a man, and becomes a mortal creature ; and, accord- 
ing to the degree in which she has attained to celestial 
truth, she is implanted in one of nine classes, — the 
highest being that of the philosophers, artists, poets, or 
lovers — and the lowest stage of all, the tyrant. Ten 
thousand years must be passed by the soul in this 
state of probation, before she can return to the place 



IhE viiARIOT OF THE SOUL. 159 

whence she came, and renew her wings of immortality. 
And at the end of each life is a day of judgment, fol- 
lowed by a period of retribution, either for good or for 
evil, lasting a thousand years ; and after that each soul 
is free to cast lots and choose another life. Then 
the soul of the man may pass into the life of a beast, 
or from a beast again into that of a man. But the 
soul of him who has never seen the truth will not pass 
again into the human form. 

But from the souls of those who have once gazed on 
celestial truth qr beauty the remembrance can never 
be effaced. Like some divine inspiration, the glories 
of this other world possess and haunt them ; and it is 
because their souls are ever struggling upwards, and 
fluttering like a bird that longs to soar heavenwards, and 
because they are rapt in contemplation and careless of 
earthly matters, that the world calls the philosopher, 
the lover, and the poet "mad." For the earthly 
copies of justice or temperance, or any of the higher 
qualities, are seen but through a glass dimly, and few 
are they who can discern the reality by looking at the 
shadow. 

And thus the sight of any earthly beauty in face or 
form thrills the genuine lover with unutterable awe 
and amazement, because it recalls the memory of the 
celestial beauty seen by him once in the sphere of 
eternal being. The divine wings of his soul are 
warmed and glow with desire, and he lives in a sort of / 
ecstasy, and shudders " with the misgiving of a former 
world." Often, indeed, a furious struggle takes place 
between the charioteer and the dark andr vicious horse 



160 PLATO. 

that wishes to draw the chariot of the soul on to un- 
lawful deeds, and can only he curbed by bit and bridle. 
Happy are they who, with the help of the white im- 
mortal steed, can win the victory in this struggle, and 
end their lives in a peaceful and genuine friendship. 

THE OTHER WOELD. 

(From the "Gorgias" and "Phsedo.") 

We mortals, says Socrates, know nothing of the real 
world, for we live along the shores of the Mediter- 
ranean like frogs around a swamp ; and we think we 
are on the surface, when we are really only in one of 
those hollow places of which our earth is full. But if 
a man could take wings and fly upwards, he would see 
the true world, which is a thousand leagues above our 
own ; and there all things are brilliant with colour, 
and sparkle with gold and purple, and a purer white 
than any earthly snow. And there are trees and 
flowers and fruits, and jewels on all the hills, more 
precious than the sardonyx or emerald. And there are 
living beings there, both men and animals, dwelling 
around the air ; for our air is like their sea, and theii 
air is purest ether. And they know neither pain noi 
disease ; and they live longer lives than we creatures 
of a day ; and all their senses are keener and more 
perfect ; and they have temples in which their gods 
really dwell, and they see them face to face, and hear 
their voices, and call them by their names. Moreover, 
they know the sun and moon and stars in their proper 
nature. 



THE OTHER WORLD. 161 

Now the largest of all the chasms in our earth is 
that which Homer calls Tartarus ; and through it 
many and mighty streams of fire and water are ever 
flowing to and fro, some driven upwards to our earth 
by a rushing wind, and others winding in various 
channels through the lower world. Of these streams 
four are larger than the rest ; and the first of these 
is called Oceanus, which flows in a circle round the 
earth. The second is Acheron, which passes through 
desert places to a lake in Tartarus, where the souls of 
the dead wait until such time as they are horn again. 
And the third river is Pyriphlegethon, which boils 
with flames and falls into a lake of fire. And the 
fourth river is Cocytus, and it passes into the Stygian 
lake, where it receives strange powers, and then, after 
many windings, it also falls into Tartarus. 

Even in the days of Saturn the same law prevailed 
as now — that men should be judged, and that those 
who had done good should be sent to the Islands of 
the Blest, and those who had done evil should be 
thrown into Tartarus. But judgment was then given 
on the day of a man's death, and both the judges and 
the judged were alive, and owing to men being still 
arrayed in beauty or rank or wealth, and the garment 
of the body also acting as a veil to the perceptions of 
the soul in the case of the judge, the judgment was 
not always just. So Jupiter ordained that for the 
future the naked soul of the judge, stripped of all its 
gross mortality, should judge .the souls that were 
brought naked before him. 

For when the soul separates from the body, each 
a. o. vol. xix. L 



162 PLATO. 

part still carries with it its mortal features; and he 
who was tall in his lifetime will be tall after death, 
and he who had flowing hair will have flowing hair 
still, and the slave who was branded by the scourge 
will cany the scars upon his body into the other world. 
So also the soul of the tyrant will bear indelible marks 
of crime, and will be " full of the prints and scars of 
his perjuries and misdeeds." Tor such a soul as his 
there can be no cure ; nor will there be any pardon for 
such as have been guilty of foul murder or sacrilege, but 
they will be thrown into Tartarus, whence they can 
never come forth, and their punishment will be ever- 
lasting. 

But those whose crimes are not unpardonable will be 
condemned by the three judges to abide in Tartarus for 
a year ; and after that they will be cast forth on the 
shores of Acheron, where they must wander lament- 
ing, and calling out on those whom they have slain 
or wronged on earth to pardon and deliver them ; and 
until their prayer is heard, they are forced to return 
again to their place of torment. 

Now the Three look with awe and reverence on the 
face of him who has lived a life of holiness and truth 
in this world, and who is probably a private citizen 
or philosopher, who has done his own work and not 
troubled himself about the business of others, and they 
send him to the Islands of the Blest, or to that purer 
earth of which we spoke before; "and there/' con- 
tinues Socrates, " they live henceforth, freed from the 
body, in mansions brighter far than these, which no 
tongue may describe, and of which time would fail 



THE STORY OF ER. 163 

me to tell. And he concludes, in language almost 
apostolic : — 

" Wherefore seeing these things are so, what ought 
we not to do, to attain virtue anrj w T isdom in this life, 
when the prize is so glorious, and the hope so great 1 " 

THE STORY OF E R. 

("Republic," Book x.) 

Er, the Pamphylian, a brave man, was slain in 
battle, and ten days afterwards his body, which, un- 
like all the other dead, was still uncorrupted, was 
brought home to be buried ; but on the funeral pyre he 
returned to life, and told all that he had seen in the 
other world. When his soul left the body (he said) 
he journeyed in company with many other spirits 
until he came to a certain place where there were two 
openings in the earth and two in the heaven, and be- 
tween them judges were seated, 

"who bade the just, after they had judged them, ascend 
by the heavenly way on the right hand, having the signs 
of the judgment bound on their foreheads ; and in like 
manner the unjust were commanded by them to descend by 
the lower way on the left hand ; these also had the symbols 
of their deeds fastened on their backs. He drew near, and 
they told him that he was to be the messenger of the other 
world to men, and they bade him hear and see all that was 
to be heard and seen in that place. Then he beheld and 
saw on one side the souls departing at either chasm of 
heaven and earth when sentence had been given on them ; 
and at the two other openings other souls, some ascending 
out of the earth dusty and worn with travel, some descend- 
ing out of heaven clean and bright, and always, on their 



164 PLATO. 

arrival, they seemed as if they had come from a long 
journey, and they went out into the meadow with joy, and 
there encamped as at a festival, and those who knew one 
another embraced and conversed, the souls which came 
from earth curiously inquiring about the things of heaven, 
and the souls which came from heaven of the things of 
earth. And they told one another of what had happened 
by the way, some weeping and sorrowing at the remem- 
brance of the things which they had endured and seen in 
their journey beneath the earth (now the journey lasted a 
thousand years), while others were describing heavenly 
blessings and visions of inconceivable beauty." — J. 

And for all evil deeds each soul suffered a tenfold 
punishment, and for its good deeds it received a ten- 
fold reward. And Er heard one of the spirits ask 
another, where Ardiaeus the Great was? (He had 
been tyrant of some city in Pamphylia a thousand 
years before Er lived, and had murdered his aged 
father and brother, and committed many other crimes.) 

" The answer was : i He comes not hither, and will 
never come.' And * indeed,' he said, ' this was one of the 
terrible sights which was witnessed by us. For we were 
approaching the mouth of the cave, and, having seen all, 
were about to reascend, when of a sudden Ardiseus ap- 
peared and several others, most of whom were tyrants ; 
and there were also besides the tyrants private individuals 
who had been great criminals ; they were just at the 
mouth, being, as they fancied, about to return to the upper 
world, but the opening, instead of receiving them, gave a 
roar, as was the case when any incurable or unpunished 
sinner tried to ascend ; and then wild men of fiery aspect, 
who knew the meaning of the sound, came up and seized 
and carried off several of them, and Ardiaeus and others 
they bound head and foot and hand, and threw them down 



THE STORY OF ER. ' 165 

and flayed them with scourges, and dragged them along the 
road at the side, carding them on thorns like wool, and 
declaring to the pilgrims as they passed what were their 
crimes, and that they were being taken away to be cast 
into hell. And of all the terrors of the place, there was no 
terror like this of hearing the voice ; and when there was 
silence, they ascended with joy.' These were the penalties 
and retributions, and there were blessings as great." — J. 

Er and his spirit-companions tarried seven days in 
this meadow, and then set out again on their journey ; 
and on the fourth day they came to a place where 
a pillar of light like a rainbow, but far brighter, 
stretched across heaven and earth, and in another 
day's journey they reached it, and found that this 
light bound together the circle of the heavens, as a 
chain undergirds a ship ; and to either end of this 
pillar was fastened the distaff of Necessity, having a 
shaft of adamant and a wheel with eight vast circles 
of divers colours, fitted into one another, and narrow- 
ing towards the centre. And in these circles eight 
stars were fixed ; and as the spindle moved round, 
they moved with it — each slowly or swiftly according 
to its proper motion. And on each circle a siren stood, 
singing in one note, and thus from the eight stars 
arose one great harmony of sound. And round about 
these circles at equal distances were three thrones, and 
on these thrones were seated the three daughters of 
Necessity, clothed in white robes, with garlands on 
their heads. And they also sang as they turned the 
circles of the spindle — Lachesis singing of past time, 
Clotho of the present, and Atropos of time that shall 



166 " PLATO. 

be. The spirits, as they arrived, were led to Lachesis 
in order by a Prophet, who took from her knees lots 
and samples of lives, and, mounting a rostrum, spoke 
as follows : " Thus saith Lachesis, daughter of Ne- 
cessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of mortal 
life ! Your genius will not choose you, but you will 
choose your genius ; and let him who draws the first 
lot have the first choice of life, which shall be his 
destiny. Virtue is free, and according as a man 
honours or dishonours her he will enjoy her more or 
less ; the chooser is responsible, heaven is justified. " 
When he had thus spoken he cast the lots among 
them, and each took up the lot which fell near him, 
all but Er himself, who was not allowed. 

And these lives were of every kind, both of men 
and animals, and were variously composed — beauty, 
and wealth, and poverty, and strength, and nobility 
all mingled together. But no definite character was 
yet attached to any ; for the future nature of each soul 
depended on the life it might choose. And on the 
choice (so said the Prophet who had arranged the lots) 
each man's happiness depended : and to choose aright 
he should know all that follows from the possession of 
power and talent ; and should choose the mean, and 
avoid both extremes so far as he may, not in this life 
only but in that which is to come. " Even the last 
comer, if he choose discreetly and will live carefully, 
shall find there is reserved for him a life neither un- 
happy nor undesirable. Le|) not the first be careless 
in his choice, neither let the last despair." 

It was a sad yet laughable sight (said Er) to see the 



THE STORY OF ER. 167 

manner in which, the souls made their choice. Tor the 
first chose the greatest despotism he could find, not 
observing that it was ordained in his lot that he 
should devour his own children ; and when he found 
this out, he lamented and beat his breast, accusing tli« 
gods, and chance, and everything rather than himself. 
And their former experience ox life influenced many 
in their choice : thus the soul of Orpheus chose the 
life of a swan, because he hated to be born again of 
woman (for women had before torn him in pieces) ; 
and Ajax chose the life of a lion, and Agamemnon 
that of an eagle, because men had done them wrong ; 
and Thersites, the buffoon of the Iliad, took the ap- 
propriate form of an ape. Last of all came Ulysses, 
weary of his former toils and wanderings ; and, after 
searching about for a while, he chose a quiet and ob- 
scure life, that was lying neglected in a corner, for all 
the others had passed it by. 

"Now when all the souls had chosen their lives in the 
order of the lots, they advanced in their turn to Lachesis, 
w T ho despatched with each of them the Destiny he had se- 
lected, to guard his life and satisfy his choice. This Des- 
tiny first led the soul to Cloth o in such a way as to pass 
beneath her hand and the whirling motion of the distaff, 
and thus ratified the fate which each had chosen in the 
order of precedence. After touching her, the same Destiny 
led the soul next to the spinning of Atropos, and thus ren- 
dered the doom of Clotho irreversible. From thence the 
souls passed straight forward under the throne of Necessity. 
When the rest had passed through it, Er himself also passed ' 
through ; and they all travelled into the plain of Forgetful- 
ness, through dreadful suffocating heat, the ground being 
destitute of trees and of all vegetation. As the evening 



f 168 PLATO. 

came on, they took up their quarters by the bank of the 
river of Indifference, whose water cannot be held in any 
vessel. All persons are compelled to drink a certain 
quantity of the water ; but those who are not preserved by 
prudence drink more than the quantity : and each, as he 
drinks, forgets everything. When they had gone to rest, 
and it was now midnight, there was a clap of thunder and 
an earthquake ; and in a moment the souls were carried up 
to their birth, this way and that like shooting-stars. Er 
himself was prevented from drinking any of the water ; 
but how, and by what road he reached his body, he knew 
not : only he knew that he suddenly opened his eyes at 
dawn, and found himself laid out upon the funeral pyre." 
— D. 



CHAPTER VII. 

RELIGION, MORALITY, AND ART. 

41 Religious ideas die like the sun ; their last rays possessing little heat, 
are spent in creating beauty." — Lecky, Hist, of Morals. 

In his famous picture of the School of Athens, Raphael 
has represented Plato as looking up towards heaven, 
while Aristotle has his eyes intently lixed upon the 
earth ; and Goethe has endorsed the idea expressed in 
this painting, " Plato's relation to the world/' he says, 
" is that of a superior spirit, whose good pleasure it is 
to dwell in it for a time. . . . He penetrates into 
its depths, more that he may replenish them from the 
fulness of his own nature, than that he may fathom 
their mysteries." * Certainly the most careless reader 
cannot help being struck by the persistency with which 
Plato dwells upon his favourite thought, that this life 
is only the first stage of an endless existence, that death 
is the release of soul from body, which the wise man 
welcomes with joy, and that philosophy itself is but a 
"meditation of death," or " the resembling, so far as is 
possible, of man to God." t In fact, dtsce mori may be 

* Quoted in Ueberweg's History of Philosophy, i. 103 — 
English transl. 
+ Phrcdo, 80; Theret., 176. 



170 PLATO. 

said to be the text of Platonism. Perhaps, he says in 
the Gorgias, Euripides was right, and our life here is 
after all a death, and our body is the tomb or prison 
of the soul.* And in the same spirit in which Socrates 
bids Crito not to be too careful about his burial, Plato 
prohibits in his " Laws " expensive funerals — " for the 
beloved one whom his relative thinks he is laying in the 
earth has but gone away to complete his destiny." The 
soul, he reiterates, really makes each of us to be what 
he is, and the body is only its image and shadow, and 
after death all that is divine in us goes on its way to 
other gods.t Man himself is nothing more than a 
puppet or plaything of the gods, acting his part on the 
stage of life with more or less success, and " with some 
little share of reality." X 

His view of human nature, and of man's limited 
powers of knowledge, is best illustrated in his own 
famous allegory of the Cave, in the seventh book of 
the " Bepublic." 

" Imagine," says Socrates, "a number of men living in an 
underground cavernous chamber, with an entrance open to 
the light, extending along the entire length of the cavern 
in which they have been confined from their childhood, 
with their necks and legs so shackled that they are obliged 
to sit still and look straight forward, because their chains 
render it impossible for them to turn their heads round : 
and imagine a bright fire burning some way off, above and 
behind them, and an elevated roadway passing between the 
lire and the prisoners, with a low wall built along it, like 

* Gorgias, 492. t Laws, xii. 959. 

t Laws, vii. 803. 



RELIGION, MORALITY, AND ART. 171 

the screens which conjurors put up in front of their au- 
dience, and above which they exhibit their wonders. . . . 
Also figure to yourself a number of persons walking be- 
hind this wall, and carrying with them statues of men 
and images of other animals wrought in wood and stone 
and all kinds of materials, together with various other 
articles, which overtop the wall ; and, as you might ex- 
pect, let some of the passers-by be talking, and others 
silent/'— D. 

"This cave," Socrates continues, "is the world, and 
the fire that lights it is the sun, and these poor pri- 
soners are ourselves — 

' Placed with our backs to bright reality ; ' 

and all sights or sounds in this twilight region are 
but the shadows or echoes of real objects. And 
as sometimes a prisoner in this cave may be released 
from his chains, and turned round, and led up to the 
light of day ; so may our souls pass upwards from the 
darkness of mere opinion, and from the shadowy im- 
pressions of sense into the pure sunlight of eternal truth, 
lighted by the Idea of Good — in itself the source of all 
truth and beauty.'' 

But "What is the Good?" Plato tells us, truly 
enough, that it is what all men pursue under different 
names, — deriving its existence, seeking its reality, yet 
totally unable to explain its nature ; and he compares 
it in a parable, as we have seen, to the sun which 
illuminates the eternal world of Ideas, but as to its 
own essential nature he leaves us still in the dark. 
The philosophers in his State will know it, he says, 
for their souls will be enlightened, but he does not 



172 PLATO. 

know it himself ; and although the knowledge of it is 
bound up with the existence of his State, and is the 
culmination of his system, all that he does is to " con- 
duct us to the chamber where this precious and indis- 
pensable secret is locked up, but he has no key to open 
the door." * 

Sometimes, indeed, he personifies this supreme Idea, 
and, as in the "Timaeus" and "Philebus," abstract good- 
ness is merged in the concrete God. But even here, 
his conception of Deity rises far above the jealous and 
sensitive occupants of Homer's Olympus, who were 
immortal beings with mortal passions and sympathies, 
strongly attached to persons and places, and sharing in 
all the hopes and fears of their worshippers. A Chris- 
tian writer could hardly frame a more exalted idea of 
divinity than that which Plato has expressed in many 
of his Dialogues. With him the Deity is a being of 
perfect wisdom and goodness, all-wise and all-powerful, 
ruling the world which he has created by the supremacy 
of His reason. He can be only known to us through 
some type or form ; but let none suppose that He 
would put on a human shape by night or by day, to 
help a friend or deceive a foe : for, being perfect good- 
ness in Himself, such a change could be only for the 
worse ; and, being perfect truth, He hates a lie either 
in word or in deed.t 

In this conception of the Deity, Plato does but repre- 
sent the tendency of Greek religion towards " Mono- 
theism." Long before his time, all the deeper thinkers 

* Grote's Plato, iii. 241. + Kepubl., ii. 



RELIGION, MORALITY, AND ART. 173 

had ceased to believe in the old mythology. Even the 
sobei piety of Herodotus had questioned some miracles 
and rejected others ; and the keen common-sense of 
Thucydides had applied the historical test to the " Tale 
of Troy," looking upon it as a political enterprise, and 
accepting the catalogue of ships "as an authentic 
muster-roll." * Then Euemerus had allegorised these 
myths ; and Palaephatus had softened them down into 
commonplace narratives of actual facts : thus the 
wings of Daedalus became a swift sailing vessel, the 
dragon which Cadmus slew was King Draco, and the 
dragon's teeth were the ivory of commerce. And 
philosophy had aided this progress of rationalism. More 
than a century before Plato, Xenophanes had pointed 
out the discrepancies involved in the popular mytho- 
logy, and had declared emphatically that there was 
" one God, not to be compared to mortals in form or 
thought — all eye and all ear — who without effort rules 
all things by the insight of his mind." So again 
Empedocles had recognised, amidst the crash of war- 
ring elements, one holy impalpable Spirit, whom none 
could come near, or touch, or see; and even Anaxagoras, 
with all his materialism, had paid homage to a sove- 
reign Mind which ruled the universe. 

" But," says Professor Maurice, " there lay in the 
very heart of the faith of the Greek a seed of unbelief 
which was continually fructifying." t "While many 
clung with unwavering faith to the religion of their 
fathers ; while a few (as we have seen) professed a 

* Grote's Greece, i. 333. + Hist, of Philos., i 86. 



L74 PLATO. 

purer and higher belief than mere anthiopomorphism ; 
— there were others who, though they rejected the an- 
cient myths, accepted nothing in their place : and 
the Sophists seem to have encouraged this increasing 
tendency to atheism among the younger and more 
sceptical spirits of this age. Prodicus maintained that 
men in olden times had deified whatever was of use 
to them : thus wine was promoted into Bacchus, and 
bread was dignified with the name of Ceres. Critias, 
again, declared that the gods had been invented by 
some crafty statesman to secure the obedience of his 
subjects ; and one daring sceptic of this school, 
Diagoras of Melos (subsequently banished from both 
Sparta and Athens for his impious theories), had 
thrown a wooden statue of Hercules into the fire, say- 
ing that he might go through his thirteenth labour in 
the flames. 

In the tenth book of the " Laws " — written, as has 
been said, in his declining years — Plato makes a bold 
stand against this growing impiety of his day. It 
springs, he says, from one of three causes ; from utter 
atheism \ or, second, from Epicurean apathy — the 
feeling that the gods exist, but never trouble them- 
selves about mankind; or, thirdly, from superstition — 
the gods both exist and care, but you can pacify their 
anger by sacrifice. Heretics, in his ideal city, are to be 
punished by solitary confinement or by death, and the 
heaviest vengeance of the law is to light on the wolf 
in sheep's clothing — the impious hypocrite who dares 
to use his priestly garb to further his own ambitious or 
criminal ends. And then he gravely takes the sceptic 



RELIGION, MORALITY, AND ART. 175 

to task, and justifies the ways of Providence.* "Do 
not" (he sajs, almost in the very words of the Psalmist) 
" the heavens declare the glory of God ] n Does not 
the universal testimony of mankind teach us that a 
God exists ? And woe to the rash and presumptuous 
youth who presumes to charge the Deity with indolence 
or neglect, merely because he sees the wicked in pros- 
perity, and handing down their power to their children 
after them. God is no unskilful workman, hut in His 
wisdom has taken thought for all things, both small 
and great. Each part of the creation has its appointed 
work and purpose, and ail the parts work together to 
some common end. What is best for one portion is 
therefore best for the whole. It is impious, indeed, 
to think that this fair creation around us could have 
been the work of nature or chance; or, again, that matter 
could have existed before mind. Such doctrines will 
sooner or later meet with their reward. 

" God, as the old tradition declares, holding in His hand 
the beginning, middle, and end of all that is, moves accord- 
ing to His nature in a straight line towards the accomplish- 
ment of His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the 
punisher of those who fall short of the divine law. To 
that law, he who would be happy holds fast, and follows it 
in all humility and order ; but he who is lifted up with 
pride, or money, or honour, or beauty — who has a soul hot 
with folly, and youth, and insolence, and thinks that he has 
no need of a guide or ruler, but is able himself to be the 
guide of others, — he, I say, is left deserted of God ; and 
being thus deserted, he takes to him others who are like 
himself, and dances about in wild confusion, and many 

* Laws, x. 886. 



176 PLATO. 

tliink that he is a great man, but in a short time he pays a 
penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly 
destroyed, and his family and city with him. Wherefore, 
seeing that human things are thus ordered, what should a 
wise man do or think, or not do or think 1 " — J. 

( The perfection of man's existence, according to Plato, 
is to bring his nature as far as is possible into harmony 
with God ; and this can only be done by cultivating 
the soul, which is the divinest part of us, and came to 
us from heaven long before our earth-born body.* 
" Honour the soul, then," he says, in one of his homilies 
in the " Laws," " as being second only to the gods ; 
and the best way of honouring it is to make it better. 
A man should not prefer beauty to virtue, nor sell his 
w r ord for gold, nor heap up riches for his children ; 
since the best inheritance he can leave them is the 
spirit of reverence. Truth is the beginning of all 
good ; and the greatest of all evils is self-love ; and 
the worst penalty of evil-doing is to grow into likeness 
with the bad : for each man's soul changes, according 
to the nature of his deeds, for better or for worse." t ) 
In more than one passage Plato combats the objec- 
tion always raised against every system of Optimism 
— the existence of evil, which implies, according to 
the atheist, either a want of goodness in the Deity to 
allow it, or a want of power to prevent it. Practically, 
Plato refutes this argument in much the same language 

* We may compare with this Kant's famous saying, "On 
earth there is nothing great but Man ; in Man there is nothing 
great but Mind. " 

t Laws, x. 



RELIGION, MORALITY, AND ART. 177 

as a modern thinker might nse. Evil in the creation 
does not imply evil in the Creator ; its existence is 
part of a vast scheme of Providence : and because, with 
our limited faculties, we cannot discern the final cause 
or design of everything in nature (e.g., the poison of 
the rattlesnake), we have no right to say, therefore, that 
no such final cause exists. Listen again to Plato (speak- 
ing in the person of Socrates) in the " Theaetetus." 

" Soc. Evils, Theodoras, can never perish; for there 
must always remain something which is antagonistic to 
good. Of necessity, they hover around this mortal sphere 
and the earthly nature, having no place among the gods 
in heaven. Wherefore, also, we ought to fly away thither; 
and to fly thither is to become like God, as far as this is 
possible ; and to become like Him is to become holy, just, 
and wise. But, my friend, you cannot easily convince 
mankind that they should pursue virtue or avoid vice, not 
for the reasons which the many give — in order, forsooth, 
that a man may seem to be good ; — this is what they are 
always repeating, and this, in my judgment, is an old 
wives' fable. Let them hear the truth : In God is no un- 
righteousness at all — He is altogether righteous ; and there 
is nothing more like Him than he of us who is the most 
righteous. And the true wisdom of men, and their no- 
thingness and cowardice, are nearly concerned with this. 
For to know this is true wisdom and manhood, and the igno- 
rance of this is too plainly folly and vice. . . . There are 
two patterns set before men in nature : the one blessed and 
divine, the other godless and wretched ; and they do not 
see, in their utter folly and infatuation, that they are grow- 
ing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their evil 
deeds ; and the penalty is, that they lead a life answering 
to the pattern which they resemble. And if we tell them, 
that unless they depart from their cunning, the place of 

A. o. vol xix. u 



178 PLATO. 

innocence will not receive them after death ; and that here 
on earth they will live ever in the likeness of their own ■ 
evil selves, and with evil friends, — when they hear this, 
they in their superior cunning will seem to be listening to 
fools." — J. 

And in the same spirit the first great "type"- to 
which all legends must conform, in his ideal State, is that 
God is good, and is the author of good alone ; the evil 
He suffers to exist for the just punishment of men. And 
therefore Plato will expunge from his new mythology 
all those false and debasing stories which Homer tells 
about the gods and heroes, with their violent passions, 
loves, and hatreds ; where even the great Achilles 
is represented as insolent and cruel, — as slaying his 
captives, cursing the Sun-god himself, and dragging 
Hector's body round the walls of Troy. He will have 
no sensational pictures of the lower world, with all its 
horrors of Styx and Tartarus, and with the souls of 
the dead " fluttering like bats " in sunless caverns. 
And the music shall be simple and ennobling : he 
will banish the wailing Lydian and soft Ionian mea- 
sures, and he will have only martial strains in the 
Dorian mood, such as Tyrtseus sang when the Spartans 
marched out to battle ; and he will dismiss with 
honour from the State the charming and versatile poet 
who can assume all shapes and speak in all voices, and 
will take instead the rough but honest story-teller who 
will recite simple and useful tales.* 

He again attacks the poets in the last book of the 
" Republic; " and here the ground of offence is their imi- 

* Rep., hi. 398. 



RELIGION, MORALITY, AND ART. 179 

tation, which is (says Plato) two degrees removed from 
reality ; for taking any object, such as a bed, there is 
first the ideal bed, created by the Deity, which alone 
has real existence ; and then there is the bed made by 
the carpenter in the image of the first ; and thirdly, 
there is the shadow of this image, which the painter 
or poet delineates in his picture or his poem, as it may 
be. " I have a great liking and reverence for Homer " 
(Plato continues), " who is the great master of all tragic 
poets — indeed from childhood I have loved his name ; 
but I love truth better. And what has Homer done 
for us, after all 1 He has not given us laws, like Solon 
or Lycurgus ; he has not given us inventions, like 
Thales and Anacharsis ; nor has he founded a brother- 
hood, like Pythagoras ; nor, again, has he taught us 
any of the arts of war and peace. If he had done any 
real good to men, is it likely that he would have been 
allowed to wander about, blind and poor? No; — all 
that he does is to give us a second-hand imitation 
of reality, to exalt the feelings which are an inferior 
part of our soul, to thrill us with pity or terror, and 
so render us unmanly and effeminate." " There are 
enough sorrows in actual life " (he says, later on, in the 
" Philebus "), without multiplying them on the stage or 
in fiction." 

Though Plato was more of a poet than a philosopher 
himself, and in his writings was said to strike the 
happy medium between poetry and prose, he is always 
disposed to regard the poets, as a class, in the light of 
harmless enthusiasts, often the cause of much mischief, 
but hardly responsible for their actions. In an earlier 



180 PLATO. 

Dialogue — the " Ion "—Socrates meets the rhapsodist 
of that name, and congratulates him upon having just 
won the prize for recitation at a public festival. " It 
must be a fine thing ; ' (he says, with a tinge of irony) 
" to be always well dressed, and to study and recite 
passages from the prince of poets ; but is Ion always 
master of his subject, and is his talent really an art 
at all 1 ? No" (Socrates goes on); "it must be inspi- 
ration — a magnetic influence, passing like an electric 
current from the loadstone of divine essence into the 
soul of the poet, and from thence into the souls of his 
hearers." 

The simple-minded Ion is delighted at the idea of 
being inspired, and confesses that he does feel in a sort 
of ecstasy when he recites some striking passage — such 
as the sorrows of .Andromache or Hecuba, or the scene 
where Ulysses throws off his rags, leaps on to the floor 
among the assembled suitors, and bends that terrible 
bow of his. "Then" (says Ion) "my eyes fill with tears, 
my heart throbs, my hair stands on end, and I see the 
spectators also weeping, and sympathising with my 
grief." 

And the conclusion of this short but graceful Dia- 
logue is, that the Deity sways the souls of men through 
the rhapsodist or poet, who is himself only the vehicle 
of inspiration, and knows little or nothing of the 
meaning of the glorious words which it is his privilege 
to utter. 



Plato's own view of poetry and art, then, is, that it 
should be pure, simple, and ideal — free from the sen- 



RELIGION, MORALITY, AND ART. 181 

sational innovations of modern days ; and he points 
with approval to Egypt, where certain forms had been 
consecrated in the temples, from which neither painter 
nor sculptor was allowed to deviate, and where for ten 
thousand years they had preserved their chants and 
the statues of their gods unchanged.* The poet should 
not be left to his own devices ; for bad music, like a 
bad companion, tends to corrupt the character : both 
the music and the words should be supervised by the 
magistrate, prizes for the best poems should be awarded 
by competent judges, and the moral of every lay or 
legend should be, that all earthly gifts — whether 
health, beauty, or wealth — are as nothing in com- 
parison with a just and holy life. And in the " City 
of the Magnetes," where his own laws are to be pro- 
mulgated, the following is to be the theme of the 
music consecrated by the State, and appointed to be 
sung by three choirs — children, youths, and men : — 

"All our three choruses shall sing to the young and ten- 
der souls of children, reciting in their strains all the noble 
thoughts of which we have already spoken, or are about to 
speak ; and the sum of them shall be, that the life which 
is by the gods deemed to be the happiest is the holiest ; — 
we shall affirm this to be a most certain truth, and the 
minds of our young disciples will be more likely to receive 
these words of ours, than any others which we might ad- 
dress to them. . . . And those who are too old to 
sing will tell stories, illustrating the same virtues as with 
the voice of an oracle." — J. 

We can never exactly tell how far Plato's views on 
* Laws, ii. 660. 



182 FLA TO 

religion are an echo of his master's, or how far they are 
his own original ideas. We have another description of 
Socrates and his teaching in Xenophon's "Memorabilia," 
and there, like Plato, he appeals to the excellence of 
the creation round him to prove the wisdom of the 
great " World-builder ; " he recognises the all-pervad- 
ing and invisible presence of the Deity ; he exalts the 
dignity of man, only " lower than the angels " in the 
possession of an immortal soul; and he points to signs 
and oracles to prove how closely we may be brought 
into actual communion with God. But in other re- 
spects, if Xenophon can be trusted, he preached a far 
lower standard of morality — upholding, in fact, the 
utilitarian doctrines so strongly condemned by the 
Platonic Socrates in the beginning of the " Kepublic." 
" You should test an action/' he is made to say, " by 
its advantages to yourself. Be just, because justice 
brings its own reward with it ; be modest, because 
immodesty never pays in society ; be brave, because 
you gain glory thereby ; be true and faithful, because 
truth will bring you friends, the most useful of all pos- 
sessions."* If this was really th^- tendency of Socratic 
teaching, it is clear that Plato took far higher ground 
than his master. Nothing, in fact, could be further 
from his thoughts than to degrade Virtue into a mere 
calculation of the chances of more or less possible 
happiness. 

And in the " Philebus " (one of his latest Dialogues), 
where the relative nature of pleasure and knowledge 

* See Zeller's Socrates and the Socratic Schools, chap. vii. 



RICL1G10X, MORALITY, AND ART. 183 

is analysed, Plato distinctly maintains that pleasures 
differ in land as well as degree/" the lowest being the 
mixed pleasures of the senses, and the highest and 
purest the mental enjoyment of music or mathe- 
matics. He also holds that wisdom is " ten thousand 
times better " than pleasure, since it alone satisfies the 
three criteria of goodness — beauty, symmetry, and 
truth ; while, in the scale of perfection, pleasure is 
degraded by him to the fifth and sixth places. 

The only one of Bentham's four " Sanctions'' t which 
he would allow to influence our conduct would be that 
described in his Myths — the rewards and punishments 
in a future world. Virtue per se is most excellent — 
being, in fact, moral health and strength, just as Vice 
is moral disease ; and worldly advantages are not to 
balance our actions, or influence us in the choice be- 
tween good and evil. Even in prayer, he maintains 
that a man should not pray for gold, or honour, or 
children, but simply for what is good ; and the gods 
will know best how to turn his prayer to his own pro- 
fit. " The prayer of a fool," he says again, " is fraught 
with danger, and likely to end in the opposite of what 
he desires." J In the same spirit he quotes (in his 
" Alcibiades, ii.") same lines from an old poet, which, 
should, he thinks, be the model for all prayers: "King 
Jove, give us what is good, whether we pray for it or 

* The utilitarian maxims are : " Pleasures differ in nothing 
but in continuance and intensity" (Paley) ; ''The quantity of 
pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry " (Bentham). 

t See his Introduction to Morals and Legislation, chap. iii. 

X Laws, iii. 688. 



184 PLATO. 

not ; and ward off what is dangerous, even though we 
pray for it." And the spirit of the prayer he declares 
to be worth more than any offerings a man can bring — 
just as the oracle of Amnion had declared the simple 
prayer of the Spartans to be worth more than all the 
sacrifices of Athens., 

In one sense, Plato does not deny the " utility " ol 
Virtue, any more than Cud worth or Butler would have 
denied it; and it is in this sense that we must take the 
famous sentence in the " Eepublic " which Mr Grote 
has prefixed as the motto to his three volumes : "The 
noblest thing that is said now, or shall be said here- 
after, is, that what is profitable is honourable, and 
what is hurtful is base." * 

*Rep., v. 457, 



CHAPTER YIIL 



LATER PLATONISM. 



Speusippus, Plato's nephew, succeeded his uncle at 
the head of the Academy ; and hoth he and those who 
succeeded him appear to have taken a few texts and 
phrases from their great master's writings, and on them 
to have built up ethical systems of their own ; while 
others, like Hermodorus, traded on those "unwritten 
doctrines," said to have been divulged only to a 
favoured few. But all that time has brought down 
to us of the later Academy is some brief and frag- 
mentary writings, and some untrustworthy traditions ; 
and, for the most part, the memorial of these philo- 
sophers Las perished with them. 

Even in Plato's own day, divisions had sprung up 
among his followers ; and one of his most promising 
pupils, who for twenty years had attended lectures in 
the Academy, founded that school which has ever 
since divided with his own the world of thought. 
" Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist : " 
their principles are mutually repugnant, and there is 
no common ground between the two ; and if Aristotle 
himself could not understand his master's point of 
view, there is still less chance of a modern Aristotelian 



186 PLATO. 

ever doing so. The very beauty of Plate's style, his 
exuberant fancy, the myths and metaphors in which 
he clothed his noblest thoughts, were all so many 
offences to the shrewd common-sense of Aristotle, who 
reasoned rigidly from fact to fact, who analysed the 
constitutions of three 'hundred states before he wrote 
a line of his " Politics," and whose cold and keen tem- 
perament had little sympathy with a philosopher who 
" poetised rather than thought." * As for the Platonic 
" Ideas " — the very foundation of Platonism — he re- 
garded them as inconceivable and impossible, or, if 
possible, practically useless. 

Plato's method of doubt and inquiry — carried far 
farther by his pupils than he ever intended it to be — 
resulted in the " New Academy," a school of Sceptics, 
of whom Pyrrho, originally a soldier in Alexander's 
army, was the leader. These Sceptics were a sign of 
the times. A weariness and despair of truth was 
creeping over society, and hence there grew up a feel- 
ing of indifference as to all moral distinctions, which 
the philosophers who professed it termed a " divine 
repose." Plato had said that there was no reality 
except in an ideal world, and Pyrrho and his followers 
pushed this doctrine so far as to denv the existence of 
any fixed standard ol rignt and wrung, or of any cer- 
tainty which sense or mind could perceive. 

Socrates, it has been said, " sat for the portrait of 
the Stoic sage ;" t and Stoicism perhaps owes as much 
to Plato as to the Cynics, of which school it was the 

* Arist., Met. xi. 5. + Noack, quoted by Ueberweg, 187. 



LA TKR PLA T OS ISM. 187 

legitimate offshoot. The majesty of mind, the high 
ideal of a life in accordance with reason and untram- 
melled by self-interest, the strong sense of a personal 
conscience, the doctrine that a man's soul was an ema- 
nation from the Deity — all these tenets might have 
been held by Plato or his master. But the Stoic dis- 
regarded, if he did not disbelieve in, the immortality 
of the soul ; and suicide, which Plato held to be 
cowardly and impious, was looked upon by Seneca 
and Epictetus as an easy and justifiable refuge againsi, 
all the evils of life. 

Zeno was the first who lectured at Athens in the 
Painted Porch, which gave its name (Stoa) to the sect. 
His pupil Clean thes — so slow and sure that his master 
compared his memory to a leaden tablet, difficult to 
write upon but retaining an indelible impression — 
carried out in actual practice the principles of his train- 
ing, drawing water and kneading dough the whole night 
long, that he might have leisure for philosophy in the 
day-time. Chrysippus followed, the second founder 
of the " Porch," who is said to have written upwards 
of seven hundred volumes ; and lastly Posidonius, the 
most learned of all, whose lectures at Ehodes were 
heard both by Cicero and Pompey. 

Eome was naturally the home of Stoicism. The 
pride and " majestic egotism " which was their ideal 
of virtue, suited stern and zealous characters like Cato 
or Cornutus ; and this pride, when softened by religious 
sentiment, produced the noblest examples of pagan 
philosophy in the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and the 
slave Epictetus. But though Stoicism could raise up 



188 PLATO. 

a school of heroes, it suppressed all softer emotions, 
and set up an ideal unattainable by any except the 
most exalted minds. A change was coming over 
society, and the want was felt of a more tender and 
attractive philosophy, and a longing for some deeper 
truth than the cold comfort given by a " creed out- 
worn " like paganism. Hence a reaction set in against 
the casuistry and scepticism of the later Stoics in favour 
of the more spiritual side of humanity. Allegory, 
Mysticism, Inspiration, and Ecstasy, were the charac- 
teristics of this new philosophy ; a critical spirit and 
the strict inductions of reason were discouraged; to 
elicit divine ideas, and to subdue the senses, was held 
to be the end of life. And, like other creeds, this 
dawned in the East. • 

Alexandria was the meeting-point of Eastern and 
Western civilisation. In its vast gardens and libraries 
might be found a medley vi all nations, creeds, and 
languages ; for the policy of the first three Ptolemys 
— known as Soter, Philadelphus, and Euergetes 
("Saviour," "Loving-brother," and "Benefactor'') — 
was a liberal and universal toleration. Accordingly, 
a temple of Isis might be found side by side with a 
Jewish synagogue, or a shrine dedicated to Venus; 
and freethinkers like Stilpo or Theodorus (banished 
from their own states in Greece for their impiety) 
were received with the same welcome at court as 
the translators of the Septuagint or the high priest 
from Eleusis. Everything, indeed, combined to 
make Alexandria the centre of attraction for philo- 
sophers and men of letters. Besides the natural 



LATER PLAT0X1SM. 189 

charms of the place — the bright sunshine, the clear 
atmosphere, and a soil so rich in flowers and fruits 
that "a man," says Ammianns, " might almost believe 
himself in another world " — there was the certainty of 
royal favour, of learned and congenial society, and 
(better than all) of a comfortable pension and a luxu- 
rious residence in or near the palace. For the further 
encouragement of literature, Ptolemy I. had founded 
and liberally endowed the " Museum " (or, as we 
should call it, " university "), witli its porticos and lec- 
ture-rooms and dining-hall, and its library of 700,000 
volumes — burnt when Alexandria was besieged by 
Caesar. In connection with the library there grew 
up a school of grammarians and critics, whose lives 
were passed in the usual routine of a royal literary 
circle, — writing, publishing, dining together, talking 
scandal, and carrying on an incessant war of words. 

In the learned world at Alexandria, some Jews 
founded a new system of philosophy by blending 
Judaism with Platonism. They sought for the 
deeper truth which they believed was hidden under 
every text of Scripture ; intensifying all that was 
miraculous or supernatural, discarding the literal 
interpretation, and neglecting the ceremonial law as 
being merely the symbolism which veiled the truth. 
Philo headed this " mystical rationalism," tracing 
Plato's world of ideas back to Moses, but giving them 
a place in the Word of God as the plan of a building 
has a place in the mind of the builder. And, in lan- 
guage like that which Plato uses in the " Timaeus," he 
describes how God, an invisible but ever-present 



190 PLATO. 

Essence, created and ruled the world by means of 
ministering spirits or potencies, of whom the Word is 
highest, and second only to Himself. 

Philo lived just before the Christian era; and from 
his time a succession of Alexandrian Jews continued 
to give to the world their transcendental theories, 
founded on one portion or another of Plato's writ- 
ings ; some, like Apollonius of Tyana, going back to 
Pythagoras for their inspiration, and others, like the 
TherapeutaB, seeking " illumination " in a lonely and 
ascetic life, — until, towards the end of the second cen- 
tury, the school of Neo-Platonists was founded by 
Ammonius Saccas. They united the Eastern doctrine 
of "emanation" with the Platonic doctrine of ideas, 
believing that the ideas emanated from the One, as the 
soul emanates from the ideas, and that the last and lowest 
stage of emanation was the sensible and material world 
around us. They held it man's duty to purify his soul, 
and make it pass through various stages of perfection, 
until at last it should be freed from all contamination 
of the senses, and, in a sublime moment of ecstasy, 
enter into actual communion with God. Pour times 
(so Porphyry tells us) his master Plotinus was thus 
"caught up" in a celestial trance. Indeed, this phil- 
osopher was so ashamed of having a bod}' at all, that 
he would tell no one who were his parents or what 
was his country, and resolutely refused ever to have 
his portrait taken ; for it was bad enough (he said) 
that his soul should be veiled at all by an earthly image, 
and he would never hand down an image of thai 
image to posterity. How deeply he was imbued with 



LATER PLATOSISM. 191 

Platonism may be seen from the mere titles of the fifty- 
four treatises which have come down to us. Provi- 
dence, Time and Eternity, Keason, Being, Ideas, the 
"Daemon" who has received each of us in charge, — such 
are the subjects of some of the chapters in his "Enneads." 
He at one time even obtained leave of the reigning 
emperor to found a city in Campania, to be called 
Platonopolis, whither he and his friends were to 
retire from the world \ but happily the idea was never 
actually put into execution. 

The next generation of Neo-Platonists carried their 
Mysticism still further. They revived divination and 
astrology ; they interpreted dreams and visions ; they 
consulted oracles ; and practised those ancient rites of 
expiation which Plato himself had so strongly con- 
demned. Iamblichus, one of their number, traced a 
mysterious affinity between earth and heaven ; and on 
one of Plato's texts — " all things are full of gods " — he 
constructed a hierarchy of heroes, daemons, angels, and 
archangels. Proclus, again — a fanatic who wished 
that all books might be burnt except Plato's "Timseus " 
— interpreted his " God - enlightened master " in his 
own fashion, and perfected himself in every form of 
ritual, fasting and keeping vigil, celebrating the festival 
of every god in the pagan calendar, and honouring 
with mysterious rites the souls of all the dead. 

There was one Neo-Platonist in the reign of Trajan 
whose genial and sympathetic character stands out in 
strong contrast to the superstition and pedantry of his 
age. This was Plutarch of Chasronea, better known 
as a biographer than a philosopher. He discusses the 



192 PLATO. 

Socratic morality with calm good sense, purges the old 
mythology, and preaches a purer monotheism than 
any of his contemporaries. 

The last of the Xeo-Platonists of whom we have 
any record was Boethius, who lectured at Athens ; and 
shortly after his time the Emperor Justinian gave the 
death-blow to Greek philosophy by interdicting all 
instruction in the Platonic school. 

It has been said that " Mysticism finds in Plato all 
its texts," and certainly most of Christian Mysticism 
may be traced back to the Neo-Platonists. From their 
time to our own we find this tendency towards a 
theologia mystica appearing in one form or another, 
— whether it be in the secret traditions of the Jewish 
Cabala — in the preaching of Eckhart in the fourteenth 
century — in the revival of Neo-Platonism at Flurence 
in the days of Cosmo de Medici — in the science of 
sympathies taught by Agrippa and Paracelsus — in 
Jacob Belimen' s celestial visions — or in Saint Teresa's 
" four degrees " of prayer necessary to reach a perfect 
" quietism." 

Plato was regarded by the early Fathers of the 
Church in the light of another apostle to the Gentiles. 
Justin Martyr, Jerome, and Lactantius, all speak of 
him as the wisest and greatest of philosophers. Augus- 
tine calls him his converter, and thanks God that he 
became acquainted with Plato first and with the Gospel 
afterwards : and Eusebius declared that " he alone of 
all the Greeks had attained the Porch of Truth." It is 
easy to understand the grounds of this feeling. Passages 
from his Dialogues might be multiplied to prove the 



LATER PL A TO y ISM. 193 

close similarity which exists between them and the 
Scriptures, especially the books of the Pentateuch. 
The picture of the ideal Socrates preaching justice 
and temperance, and opposing to the self-assertion of 
the Pharisees of his age the humility of the earnest 
inquirer and the soberness of truth — his declaration 
at his trial that he will obey God rather than man, 
and fears not those who are only able to kill the body 
— the description of the just man persecuted, scourged, 
tortured, and finally crucified,* — such passages serve 
to explain the prayer of Erasmus, who added to 
the invocation of Christian saints in his litany, 
" Sancte Socrates, ova pro nobis;" and the belief of so 
many of the Fathers that Plato, like St John the Bap- 
tist, was a forerunner of Christ. Again, the strong 
faith in the immortality of the soul — the no less strong 
sense of the pollution of sin — the belief that virtue is 
likeness to God — the idea in the " Phaedrus " of a word 
sown in the heart, and bringing forth fruit in due sea- 
son — the parable of the " Cave " and the Light of the 
upper world, — are a few instances out of many which 
might be quoted to show the foreshado wings of Chris- 
tianity so often traced in Plato. Once, indeed — in 
the last conversation held by Socrates with his friends 
■ — a passage occurs which seems to point even more 
directly than any we have quoted to a Eevelation 
'hereafter to be granted. Simmias, one of the speak- 
ers in the Dialogue, thinks it impossible to hope for 
exact knowledge in the great question they are dis- 
* The literal Greek is "impaled." 
A. C. vol. xix. N 



194 PLATO, 

cussing — the unknown future of the soul ; still, he argues, 
they should persevere in the search for truth, taking 
the best of human words to bear them up " as on a raft " 
through the stormy waters of life ; but their voyage 
on this frail bark would be perilous, unless they might 
hope to meet with some securer stay — some " word 
from God," it might be. 

Passages of this sort explain sufficiently the grounds 
of the reverence with which Plato was regarded by 
the Eastern- Church, and especially in the school for 
catechists at Alexandria, where Clement and Origen 
taught. They even go far to justify the belief of 
Augustine that Plato might perhaps have listened to 
Jeremiah in Egypt, and that in his esoteric lectures 
in the Academy he revealed the mystery of the Trinity 
to a few chosen disciples. 

Tertullian, on the other hand, declaimed bitterly 
at Carthage against all Greek philosophy. He headed 
the reaction which had set in against the Gnostics of 
a former century, who had changed Plato's " Ideas" 
into a world of iEons, and held that the Word, 
Wisdom, and Power, were so many emanations from 
the divine mind. Platonism Tertullian held to be the 
source of all heresies, and denied that there could be 
any fellowship between the disciple of Greece and the 
disciple of heaven, or between the Church and the 
Academy. 

Boethius, as we have said, was the last Ueo-Platon- 
ist i and his " Consolations of Philosophy " is the link 
between the old w r orld and the new. Then came the 
Dark Ages, when the classics were only read by monks 



LATER PLATONISM. 195 

and churchmen, till they were revived in the schools 
of Alcuin and Charlemagne. 

Philosophy soon passed into scholasticism, and was 
confined to the dogmas of the Church ; and through- 
out the Middle Ages we find two great hostile camps 
among the Schoolmen — the Realists and Nominalists — 
each fighting under the shadow of a great name ; Plato 
being the first (said Milton) "who brought the monster 
of Realism into the schools," in his doctrine of Ideas, 
so sharply criticised by Aristotle. The question at 
issue between these two parties was whether Universals 
had a real and substantial existence, subject to none 
of the change and decay which affects particulars, or 
whether (as the Nominalists argued) they were merely 
general names expressive of general notions. 

Early in the thirteenth century came a reaction from 
the East in favour of Aristotle. His writings (which 
had escaped destruction by the merest accident) had 
beer translated as early as the fifth century into Syriac 
and Arabic ; the Jews had translated them into Latin ; 
and the conquests of the Arabs in Spain had brought 
tk'r 1 to the knowledge of the Schoolmen. Averroes, 
the greatest of Arabian commentators, looked upon 
Aristotle as the only man whom God had suffered to 
attain perfection, and as the source of all true science. 
He died in a.d. 1198, just before the rule of the Moors 
in Spain came to an end ; but " Averroism," with its 
pantheistic tenets, long survived its founder. 

Albert of Bollstadt, Provincial of the Dominican 
order in Germany, " the universal doctor " (who bears a 
kin I of half-mythical reputation as Albertus Magnus), 



196 PLATO. 

reduced Aristotle's writings to a system. His pupil, 
Thomas Aquinas, " the angelic doctor," soon followed in 
his steps, rejecting all the texts of Platonism, denying 
innate ideas, or a priori reasoning in theology ; but he 
is so far a realist that he recognises the existence of 
universals ante rem — that is, in the divine mind; and 
post rem — that is, obtained by the effort of the indi- 
vidual reason. His contemporary, Duns Scotus, " the 
subtle doctor," went further, and assailed Platonism 
with every weapon that the logic of his age supplied; 
while, later on, William of Ockham, " the invincible 
doctor," revived Nominalism, and regarded universals 
as a mere conception of the mind. Realism passed 
out of date with Descartes in the sixteenth century, 
and the tendency of all modern philosophy has been 
distinctly towards Nominalism. Our own great philo- 
sophical writers, Hobbes, Berkeley, Hume, and Locke, 
all maintain that it is possible to have general names 
as the signs or images of general ideas. 

Bacon, the contemporary of Descartes, denounced 
the wisdom of the Greeks as being " showy and dis- 
putatious ; " , their logic he considers useless, their 
induction haphazard, their dialectic " the mere chatter- 
ing of children ; " and among one of the grand causes 
of human error — " the idols of the theatre," as he 
terms them * — he ranks the Platonic " Ideas." 

Once again an attempt was made to revive Platon- 

* "I look upon the various systems of the philosophers," 
says Bacon, "as merely so many plays brought out upon the 
stage — theories of being which are merely scenic and ficti- 
tious." — Nov. Org., i. 44. r 



LATER PLATONISM. 197 

ism, at the end of the seventeenth century, by Cud- 
worth, a writer of profound classical learning, who 
maintained that there were certain eternal and im- 
mutable verities which can only be comprehended by 
reason, can never be learned by experience, and cannot 
be changed by the will or opinion of men. And in 
this sense every intuitive moralist may be said to be 
a Platonist ; for the doctrine of a moral sense, which 
apprehends of itself the distinctions of right and 
wrong, and is not merely the product of society or 
association, has its origin in the Platonic theory of 



KND OF PLATO, 



c^ 



